Forged in Blood and Bone
by Vherstinae
Summary: A campaign of hatred left her bent, but unbroken. When the world continues to be horrible to good people, however, the bent iron will snap back and strike at the aggressors. AU, Alt-Power Taylor.
1. Contagion 01

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Worm_ or any other known properties that may be referenced in the course of this story. Any original characters are mine. I also own several stuffed animals and a collection of penguin cookie jars.

Anyway, this idea's been percolating in the chasm I call a brain for a while but I could never get the setting or feel right. Then, while trying to sleep off my insomnia, I had an idea for the introductory scene and decided to get shit done, son. This story will, naturally, be available on all my usual sites and will be free on . With luck, this will help me stave off writer's block and keep churning out content for my readers. Now, on with the trainwreck!

 **Contagion 1.01**

The humanity of parahumans is something scientists and scholars continue to debate over, mostly in anonymity because waffling over whether to call a person non-human is something that inevitably brings up allusions to slavery and the Third Reich.

In truth, parahumans probably shouldn't be classified as homo sapiens the same as everybody else. They have unbelievable powers, and some of them are changed completely. There are people made out of metal, or bizarre plastic-like strips; people like Newter and Gregor the Snail have completely different biological makeup despite being demonstrably organic. The issue, of course, is that they _were_ human, before their trigger event.

Trigger events aren't widely talked about on PHO, which is something I consider to be a disservice. I get that people don't necessarily want to portray all capes as broken people, and the kind of suffering that causes a trigger event isn't something to be brought up lightly, but I think people need to know and understand what kind of horror is required to get powers. In fact, I didn't even learn about what trigger events were until I started looking up old scholarly articles at the public library.

So the big issue with parahumans is that they were human, the same as everyone else, except for one thing: a little bit of extra tissue in the brain, the corona pollentia. When a trigger event occurs, another little cerebral polyp appears, this time the corona gemma. With most parahumans, that's the extent of the biological changes, but others increase in height or get suddenly muscular or any number of other bizarre happenings.

I'd gotten this deep into the scientific and philosophical definition of cape humanity for a simple reason: I was a cape, and I was fairly certain I was no longer human. Humans shouldn't be able to do what I can do; shouldn't be able to even conceive it except in the context of science-fiction. Worse, as a sort of final fuck-you from the universe to me, my power endlessly reminded me of my trigger event.

Trapped in a locker that shouldn't even have been able to hold a human being while empty – my fitting inside due only to the fact that the campaign of bullying had killed my already low appetite and changed me from thin to skeletal – I was surrounded by rotting filth, blood and bodily fluids and god-knows what else. In that tiny metal coffin, through the haze of deathly stench, I cracked. I wished for death. I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn't move well enough or even find any protruding metal with which to slash my wrists or neck. I spiraled into self-loathing, hating every last aspect of myself. If I was just someone different, if I'd been born another person, maybe I could have had a happy life.

Apparently people black out when they trigger, likely because the brain is rewiring itself. When I came to, I was pooled in the bottom of the locker. My entire body's volume was a liquid, yet I somehow retained my senses. I could understand direction and could somehow _see_ , despite being a puddle. My mass was cohesive, thankfully, so I managed to force my way through a crack in the locker and ooze out. The next few hours were spent figuring out how to reassemble myself. As far as parahuman powers go, being a red puddle wasn't high up on the usefulness meter.

When I finally got fed up and just tried to force myself back together, something really freaky happened. I reassembled myself, but I wasn't myself. I certainly didn't have skin like dark chocolate, or tight muscles from years of athletic training. I also wasn't so damn _short_. Looking back on it, 5'5" isn't actually very short for a girl, particularly a fifteen-year-old, but when you're used to being 5'11" it seems like a Smurf. My stomach dropped out and I ran for the nearest mirror to find that I had indeed taken the form of one of my tormentors, the one who had actually shoved me into the locker: Sophia Hess.

And Sophia – I – was naked.

That prompted two separate freak-out sessions, followed by a rush of anger. The goddamn lights were off. No-one had helped me, no-one had rescued me from that filth. I'd been in there for probably eight or ten hours, and not one student had spoken up about the stench and the dripping goop. Not one faculty member had done the barest amount of their goddamn job to check on a student they knew was being tortured.

With a scream, I lashed out and punched the wall. Or, I should say I punched _through_ the wall. The locker-room wall offered no real resistance to my fist as it went in one side and out the other. That definitely wasn't some aspect of Sophia; if she'd been that strong I had no doubt she'd have just beaten me to death.

The surprise of that punch shocked me out of my emotional overload. _First things first_ , I thought, making a mental list to help keep myself on track, _I need to figure out how to turn back to normal, get some clothes, and go see Dad_.

Since Winslow High was pretty much abandoned at night, I sat down on a bench and just thought. I had hours before anyone would show up again, so I didn't need to worry about hiding or covering up. On that train of thought, I realized that I wasn't cold. Winslow was a shithole and didn't splurge on necessities, so they definitely didn't keep the heating on at night. It was January, and it was dark out, yet I felt perfectly fine.

"Curiouser and curiouser," I muttered before shelving that line of inquiry for later. The most important thing now was to turn back into myself. How had I become Sophia in the first place? I got angry, tried to force it, hating myself not like I had in the locker, but with scorn and derision. I'd inadvertently put myself in a Hess-like mindset. So what, then, was my mindset? _Suffering_ , I thought, the word tasting sour even in my mind. But no, that was what I had become, what they'd beaten me into. But that was just the outside. Who was I, in truth?

Of course, it was just like me to ask one of the all-time biggest philosophical questions and expect to solve it immediately. And like that, it clicked. I was the one who dreamed big, who used her mind and dared to hope in the darkness. Even when Mom died, I hurt – I hurt a lot – but I stayed strong for Dad. That was at least part of who I was. And with that, I felt my body shift, my perspective rising. My glasses appeared on my face, my loose jeans, tee, and baggy hoodie materializing around me.

I hurried home. Dad had been terrified and I'd had no choice but to tell him about the attack, the bullying campaign, and who was responsible.

How I wish I was writing a story. I could say everything got better, that we took the school and the Barneses for all they were worth, and restarted our lives. That I joined the Wards and became a superhero, idol of many. Unfortunately, the events that followed helped show me another part of who I was: fate's punching bag.

The first few lawyers we tried to hire agreed to take the case, but each one would soon turn around and drop us like steaming shit. When we did finally get a lawyer with the balls to fight, we found out why the others had declined. Something was rotten in the state of New Hampshire, because the judge threw out the case with barely a moment's consideration. Legal fees brutalized us and we had to sell a lot of things just to keep the house.

The bullying didn't stop. If anything the failure of our lawsuit made them even bolder in their abuse. After a while, I just stopped going to school. Dad didn't object. He didn't do much of anything.

And that leads me back to the question of humanity. In the process of natural selection, when a mutation or other quirk of birth led to an exceptionally advantaged specimen, that bloodline would take precedence and become the dominant gene until such variation had occurred that a new species had to be classified. And with the advent of this new species, the old one would soon become extinct.

So, in truth, what I was planning wasn't murder; it was natural selection. I was a parahuman, the new genotype, and my tormentors were homo sapiens, the old breed. I was just furthering human evolution.

(BREAK)

Despite living in an age of such advanced technology, few people put it to use. They look at Tinkers and fantasize about what could be, rather than looking at the goddamn internet and seeing what is. While not having a computer at home anymore made research a bit more difficult, it didn't take long for me to narrow down the few Hesses in the yellow pages and then search the phone number to get the address. I then did the same for Clements, which was a slightly more common surname.

Sophia was my first target. She was the monster who took my friend and twisted her into something nightmarish. She was the brute who was always going on about predator and prey. I'd show her what it felt like to be prey. I understood that my reason for action – vengeance – was petty, but if I couldn't fix my life then I was certainly not going to let them be happy. They didn't deserve it. Another part of me, the part that used to want powers, to be a hero, provided a different argument: they would keep hurting people. They wouldn't stop even if I disappeared, and there was pretty much no chance of reforming them. I needed to remove them to protect all the other poor, hurt children. That was a valid reason, and it was a good one, but it was minor compared to my wrath.

Oh, I wasn't going to make them suffer like they did to me. I didn't have the time, patience or stomach for such a campaign of hate. Instead, I was going to deliver all that pain in a lump sum and see if they could survive. I wasn't betting on it.

Most parahumans, hero or villain, need to protect their identity. Even freaks like Lung, a towering Asian bastard rippling with muscle, still wore a mask even though he was easily identifiable by body type alone. Me? I didn't need a mask. Not when I could wear other people's faces. I'd originally been confused as to why I could take the appearance of my three tormentors and most of their clique, until I took a moment and looked at it rationally: I seemed to be made out of blood, and I'd been packed in with other blood. Somehow I'd absorbed the other blood and could then use the...memory of the DNA to take their appearance. So, for perfect cover, I slipped into the night wearing Sophia's face.

If you're killed by a copy of yourself, is it murder or suicide?

(BREAK)

I never got tired. That doesn't simply mean that I didn't need to sleep, which seemed to be a trait a fair number of capes shared: I literally never seemed to run out of stamina. I didn't bother with a bus, simply running from my house near the docks to Sophia's, which was southeast of downtown. Flat-out, I could probably manage about twenty miles an hour, and I never ran out of energy. I wasn't even sweating or breathing hard, which made sense since I was really just a construct made out of blood.

Brockton Bay at night was a dangerous place. Well, Brockton Bay at any time of day was dangerous. But at night the scum of the earth didn't fear to crawl out and do whatever evil they did. Despite moving so quickly, I could easily keep track of everything going on around me. I saw drug deals, sex in decrepit alleyways, a group of E88 beating the shit out of two black kids...

 _Damn it,_ I growled to myself, _I don't need this. I'm in a hurry!_ But try as I might, I couldn't justify my inaction. I was better than Sophia, who'd just smirk at the prey too weak to fight back. I was better than Madison, who'd just run and hide. I was better than Emma, who'd probably just ignore it altogether. And despite what I was on my way to do, I liked to think I was still a decent person.

I didn't announce my presence other than my rapid footfalls before crashing into the nearest skinhead. They were all relatively young, late teens and early twenties, probably new inductees looking to prove themselves. My target and I fell in a tangle of limbs and I had to keep reminding myself that this body was six inches shorter and had far less reach. Regardless of size, I had Brute-level strength so it was simple to pry myself loose from the ganger. I didn't bother controlling my strength and heard several of his bones and/or joints crack when I extricated myself. He huddled in on himself, lying on the ground and screaming from the pain.

The other three turned to face me. The oldest had his head shaved and wore a leather jacket emblazoned with the Empire Eighty-Eight symbol, a Nazi flag with two swastikas, each one manipulated to resemble the number 8. He must've been showing the ropes to the others. The remaining two just wore black bandanas around their arms. "Well look at this," the leader said in a southern accent, "another porch monkey wants to join the fun."

Oh, that's right. I was still wearing Sophia's form. Well, I could work with that. Maybe I wouldn't have to fight and waste time. "I figured it'd be poetic," I smirked before shifting to Julia's appearance. It took more concentration to overlay my clothes, but I managed it. Julia was tall, skinny and blonde; a perfect choice. "This make you more comfortable?"

"Shit, cape!" The younger two rushed me, but it was a distraction. They must've practiced this, or maybe Empire training covered defense against parahumans. Either way, the pair broke apart at the last moment and a deafening blast split the night. I felt the sharp impact in my eye and was thrown off my feet. "Let's get gone!" They left the injured skinhead and I could hear their footsteps fade into the distance.

Well, I wasn't dead. In fact, it didn't hurt all that much. Oh, the initial impact hurt a lot, but having never been shot I didn't have anything to which I could compare it. But the pain was fading and I could feel a weird grinding sensation in my eye socket and... Something popped loose and I managed to catch it. My body had pushed out the bullet. Cool.

The young couple staggered to their feet, two effete-looking black men. _Boy, did they lose out. Black AND gay in Empire territory after dark?_ "Are...are you alright, miss?" one of them drew up the courage to ask.

I pushed myself to my feet and shifted back into Sophia's form so I wouldn't forget later. "Yeah. Hurt, but I'm okay. You?" I dusted myself off a little. "What were you doing in Empire territory, anyway?"

"Missed the bus," the other one replied while examining his ruined glasses. "I heard Oni Lee's been roaming the area, staking out new territory, so we figured it'd be better to move through Empire and risk a beating than ABB and risk getting our throats slit."

It was hard to argue with their logic. "Well get moving. Those guys are probably gonna report back and then you'll have to worry about Empire capes in the area." I strode toward the alley's mouth. "I've got my own appointments to keep or I'd offer to escort you back."

"You've done enough already," the first man smiled. "You stay safe."

I gave them a smile and a wave. I'd left with them thinking I was a hero. Now it was time to go kill somebody in cold blood.


	2. Contagion 02

**Contagion 1.02**

I was surprised by the state of the Hess family house. It was even more run-down than my home had become, a little three-bedroom hovel that seemed to proudly display its lack of upkeep. I knew Sophia lived with her mom so I couldn't just break the door down without risking her calling the cops; of course, I didn't need a key to slip inside.

Sophia's shorter legs carried me across the cracked asphalt and broken sidewalk, up to the front door where I stooped down to check for openings. Sure enough, there was a lack of weather stripping in one corner, enough to let water or some little bugs in. Or a parahuman. I liquefied my body and slithered through before reforming and making certain I was still wearing Sophia's face. I'd been the target of her hate for long enough that I knew most of her mannerisms: if her mother was up and about, I was reasonably sure I could pass as the bitch long enough to get to Sophia's room.

Mom had been an English teacher at Brockton U, and had been fascinated with etymology – the study of word origins. Because of this, I knew that Sophia came from the Greek for "wisdom." While this seemed extremely inappropriate, further research presented the sophists, people who pretended to be intelligent by spouting confusing nonsense and lording their supposed brilliance over the unwashed masses. That reminded me more of Sophia, ranting her bullshit about the natural order of things, predator and prey, yadda-yadda-yadda. Sophists pretended to understand the concepts they espoused; I was going to teach Sophia the true meaning of predation.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked around the living room. It was sparsely furnished with only an old couch that looked to be made from carpet, a plywood coffee table with faux-mahogany finish, and a little TV set up on the box it'd came in. More of interest, however, were the more valuable-looking knickknacks. Unless the Hess family was wasting its income on pricy hunks of shit rather than upkeep of their home, I was willing to bet these were gifts from Emma. The Barnes family was well-off, that was a commonly known fact, but they'd gotten that way by being miserly. During my entire friendship with Emma, she'd only even offered to buy me a handful of things and I'd turned her down most times out of a sense of self-sufficiency. There had to be more tchotchkes here than I'd ever been offered, and they'd only been friends for what, two years? Sophia didn't strike me as the type to accept gifts, seeing it as charity...unless she saw it as tribute, kick-ups from fiefdoms to the queen. The thought made me sick to my stomach, though that was really a phantom sensation as I was fairly sure I no longer had human internal organs.

I didn't bother trying Sophia's doorknob, certain someone like her would have it locked. Instead I once again oozed under the door and reassembled myself. Hess' room was better furnished than the rest of the house, even a goddamn top-of-the-line laptop on her desk. I wanted to take it for myself, but I was sure there were ways of tracking it... _Well,_ I said to myself, _what if Sophia went to the local pawn shop and traded it in along with a few other things?_ It was a better idea. I didn't need a computer as much as Dad needed to not worry about bills. Some money coming in would be a big help.

Sophia slept flat on her back, her arms on top of the sheets despite the cold. With my strength, I could have crushed her skull before she awoke, but it wasn't about the kill itself. I needed her to understand why she was going to die, to see before the end that her actions have consequences.

"Hey there, sunshine," I crooned in Sophia's voice, the gentle greeting made cruel by my tone.

The evil bitch shook her head a little before her eyelids flickered. "Mm? Huh?" Apparently she was unused to being awoken by a relatively pleasant voice. I wasn't surprised; children are often shaped by their parents, after all. But Sophia was the one who took action and chose to hurt others. Her mother was only responsible to a certain degree, and I wasn't about to go on a massacre. This was about retribution, not animal savagery.

Sophia turned to look at me and blinked once or twice before realization dawned on her. She shucked the bedsheets faster than I had expected, as though it were a practiced action, and leapt to her feet. "Okay," she growled, "what's your fucking game? How did you find me?"

Interesting that she asked that before asking who I was. Did she already presume I was Taylor? "The phone book is a wonderful thing, Sophia," her face smirked at her.

That answer seemed to leave her confused. "How would you even – wait, _Hebert!?_ " Her eyes snapped wide open now and I couldn't help the sinister grin that spread across my lips.

"My, my. You must have been one naughty girl if you couldn't even guess who was coming for revenge." I took a menacing step toward her. "So here's what's gonna happen: I suffered all of your violence, hatred and indignation, isolated and helpless. And I survived. Now you're going to suffer the same. And we'll see if you survive."

"Give me a break, Hebert. You're nothing but a worthless pile of shit. You even triggered and all you could manage was to look like me?" _How does she know what a trigger event was?_ She was certainly no scholar. Sophia lashed out with a quick rabbit punch to my throat. Were I still human, that would have left me gagging for air and staggering back. As it stood, it hurt a tiny bit and jarred my body but Sophia was the one who staggered, shaking off her hand.

Hess' eyes hardened to a level of hatred I'd never seen before and she lunged forward before dropping into a slide, slipping between my legs. She grabbed my ankle as she twisted and stood up, pulling my leg out from under me. I hit the floor chin-first but just rolled with the blow, shifting onto my back so I could stand up facing her.

Then she reached through her closet door, her arm turning into a barely-cohesive cloud of black smoke. She retrieved a crossbow and I could see in the darkness how light glinted off the metal bolt.

I should have been angry. I should have launched into a berserker fury and destroyed the entire house and everyone in it. Instead, I chuckled. "So that's why. You're fucking Shadow Stalker. That's why the judge threw out our case, why Winslow dropped the ball more than usual." I shifted back to my normal form, Sophia's eyes widening in disgust as I did so. "Y'see, as a kid I always wanted to be a hero. Now that I know you're one, though, I think being a villain is the more moral path."

The moment I finished my sentence she snapped up her arm with the precision of a talented madwoman and fired a bolt right into my forehead. It hurt when it lodged in there, then just kind of itched. I grabbed the shaft and yanked it out of my skull. "Try again for the kewpie?"

I knew I could turn into liquid, but I'd never tried to aerosolize myself before. I knew that Sophia would run. She was a coward when it all came down to it. So, when she tried to phase through me – or through the wall – I'd shove myself into her cloud. I knew I could take the damage of another person's parts being lodged inside me. Sophie, on the other hand? I doubted it.

Instead of just phasing out and fleeing through the wall, Sophia made for the door, which meant she had to go through me. I clenched myself, trying to build up pressure, and when she lunged I detonated myself. Bits of red mist mingled with her smoke, carried with her through the door. I focused my consciousness into the pieces there, the rest of my essence acting on autopilot and slithering in pursuit. Sophia must not have had the same level of awareness regarding her body, because she didn't seem to realize that I'd hitched a ride. She reformed on the other side of her door, and when she became solid I found myself inside her body. I could feel it, just like I felt myself. More than that, however, I felt a deep, agonizing, to-the-bone _hunger_. I needed something, though I didn't understand what that something was. I felt certain that if I didn't get whatever it was, that I would die. I hadn't come this far to die now, so I let instinct take over.

Fingers of my essence shot through her body, grabbing and squeezing. Sophia fell to her knees and groaned in utter agony. I could feel her all-consuming pain, experience all of her senses at the same time I sensed myself spreading through her. The rest of my liquid form pooled at her feet and the fingers became tendrils, a deep visceral red so dark they were nearly black. I tore through her, consuming, gorging myself on a meal so heavenly it was like nothing I'd ever imagined. Even experiencing every second of her agony wasn't enough to put the slightest damper on the joy I felt.

Then I reached her brain, the only part of her that was truly valuable, the hive of secrets. Once I'd absorbed that, much more carefully than I'd been devouring her body, there was no need for care. In an instant Sophia's corpse ripped apart and fell in on itself, her body reassembling. Except it wasn't Sophia, not anymore. I tried to stand but my legs gave out and I slumped to the floor as a series of visions, memories from her life, flashed across my mind. Individual nodes, clusters of memories like stars in an empty galaxy. Tearing from one to another at such a pace that I could barely comprehend what I was experiencing, but as I raced, things began to piece together.

 _I had the bastard cornered. Drug pusher decides to come into my turf? I'd show him he couldn't start shit and expect not to get smacked down. I threw him against the fire escape railing. He was bigger and probably stronger than me, but my crossbow had bite. A couple bolts in him and he was in too much pain to fight back. "Think you can come in my house? Shit on my carpet and think you can get away with it?"_

" _Th–" The bastard spluttered, coughing out some blood from his busted lip and other mouth damage. "The fuck you talkin' about, bitch? I never did nothin' to you, and you don't look like no Ward."_

" _I don't like pushers on my turf!" I pushed him over the edge and grabbed him by the ankles. I'd dangle him for a bit, get him scared, then send him back to his bosses. With luck they'd kill him for being an idiot and the rest would know not to mess with me._

 _I couldn't hold him. I hadn't realized just how_ heavy _a man could be. My grip broke and he landed on his neck._ Oh well, _I shrugged, turning away from the railing._ Not like that scum really mattered...

(BREAK)

 _Shadow Stalker, that's what they'd taken to calling me. I liked it. The little pussies on PHO liked to talk shit about me, say how I was just a thug in a costume going after easy prey because I didn't want the heroes after me. Like those worthless fucks could do anything. They weren't cleaning up this city, weeding the weak from the strong. I jumped and phased, my Breaker form floating up until I could perch on a rooftop. A few ABB fucks were torturing a busty redhead. I'd wait to see if she was a fighter. If not, I'd let them finish her before taking them down. Nobody was there to say I hadn't arrived in time to do something, after all. The girl was whimpering, crying like a little bitch. But she fought back, even knowing she was outgunned. I smirked and fell off the building, taking down the slant-eyed shits._

 _That's how I met Emma Barnes, who helped make life so much easier. Even when the Protectorate caught me and took me down, thanks to Emma's dad I ended up only being pressganged into the Wards rather than being carted off to jail with the failures._

 _It took Emma's worthless little hanger-on so long to realize that trash like her wasn't wanted. Even the locker wasn't enough to chase her off. She and that putz father of hers actually tried suing the school. Alan managed to spin things and, with Emma's help, we made Hebert look like an unstable maniac who did it all to herself. Piggy didn't want to run the risk of exposing a Ward's identity and dragging the PRT through the mud, so she managed to silence the case somehow. And then Hebert finally stopped coming to school. With any luck, she'd kill herself soon._

(BREAK)

 _For all their power, the Protectorate were losers. They were so concerned with preserving peace that they wouldn't take action necessary to fix things, so worried about the filth in the streets that they wouldn't accept collateral damage. And on top of that, they were too afraid of getting hurt to put themselves at any real risk._

 _The Wards were even worse, a bunch of whiny little brats who all wanted to be friends and sing kumbayah or some bullshit. Thankfully, they disliked me just as much as I hated them, so I got a lot of chances to go on solo patrols. Got a lot of scum cleaned up, either trussed up for arrest or bleeding out in the gutters to no longer be a burden on the strong._

I reflexively gasped for air and had to fight in order to hold in a scream. I'd seen Sophia's thoughts, but moreover they were thoughts relevant to my own experiences. Had I somehow sought those out? Unconsciously searched for answers to questions I hadn't asked?

I rolled onto my back, still hyperventilating even though I'd been reasonably sure I no longer needed to breathe. I'd killed a person. Not only that, but I'd fucking eaten her. I'd become her and I realized I now held an encyclopedic knowledge of her mannerisms, everything I'd need to become her. Except... I thought, flexed my brain as best I could, but I couldn't activate her power. I guess that'd be too easy.

"Huh," I whispered upon finding that I was now in Sophia's nightclothes. Before, the only clothing I could manifest had been my own, and I had to be careful to overlay the clothing 'template' before changing or I'd end up naked. For that matter, Sophia's clothing was gone. Had I absorbed them along with her body?

I needed to focus. There were too many questions and if I kept asking then I'd get completely lost in my own mind. I'd killed Sophia. That was what I'd set out to do, but if I'd had any doubt that it was the right thing to do, those visions put it to rest. She was a broken human being, content to let innocent people suffer and die if they weren't 'strong enough'. If she weren't black she'd have made for a good Nazi. On the other hand, my own argument – the one I'd used to help justify my revenge – now tasted like ash in my mouth. If I claimed to be the next step in evolution, did that justify abandoning all of the supposedly inferior homo sapiens? My father was one, too: could I eventually leave him behind, even kill him?

No, I was better than that. Someone like Sophia, or someone who genuinely believed my evolution argument, wouldn't have stopped to save those men from the Empire. But I'd taken a life and, now that the shock was wearing off, I wasn't really upset about it. That kind of coldness was dangerous. I could find myself on the metaphorical slippery slope, fading into the same kind of hatred I'd just ended. I needed a goal and, from the last vision Sophia had so helpfully shared with me, it seemed I had one.

The Protectorate was hamstrung; its heroes couldn't use lethal force unless authorized, and had to work to keep the peace. Of course, that peace just meant slow decline and eventual death. You don't cure the plague by just lancing the boils and pretending it doesn't exist otherwise; you need to treat it at the source.

I could do what Sophia, in her own warped reality, believed herself to be doing: I could fix the city, heal it.

In order to do so, I had to remove the disease that festered within the lymphatic system of Brockton Bay. The gangs had to go.

I wasn't going to leave the Hess residence just yet; I was going to take my pound of flesh. Sophia owed me for all the pain, and her death wasn't enough. I wouldn't punish her family, at least not directly. But I'd certainly take some damages. That laptop was first on my list. Before pawning it, I'd see if she had anything worthwhile squirreled away on her hard drive.

The bedroom door was still locked, so I went to liquefy and slip under the door. This time, however, I felt another mental muscle ready to flex. I tried it and instead aerosolized myself once again. Now, though, Sophia's memories filled in the blanks. I understood how to direct my movements as a gas. I pushed myself around the doorframe and reformed.

I spared a glance at the closet. I'd need more of a wardrobe than just my one outfit and a set of pajamas. Sophia had a whole closet full of stylish stuff that she no longer needed.

For the first time in years, I felt that things might actually be looking up. I had purpose. I had the means to fight back against the universe's injustices. I would save my home, even from itself.


	3. Contagion 03

**Contagion 1.03**

Now that I had the chance to actually see what was happening, it was a disturbing sight. In order to absorb Sophia's clothing, numerous tendrils of red-black blood extruded themselves from my arm and dove into the outfits, dissolving them and pulling the mess into my body. After a couple seconds I found that I could reconstitute the clothes, and they would fit on whichever body I chose to wear. Unfortunately, it seemed that absorbing clothes individually meant that _only_ that article would appear on me; in other words, manifesting a top would leave me naked from the waist down. While I began training myself to mix-and-match attire, there came a knock on the door. _Shit, did her mom hear?_

"Soph, you okay? I heard noises..."

Well, that certainly wasn't an adult woman's voice. It sounded like a prepubescent girl. Sophia's memories weren't coming; maybe it was a one-time deal? Either way, I shifted back into Shadow Stalker's body and donned her pajamas. "Yeah, yeah, one second," I grouched in Sophia's default acidic tone. I opened the door to see a small girl, probably about nine or ten, a concerned and fearful look on her face. Living with Sophia, I understood why the girl – Naomi – would be afraid. In that moment, a cascade of fragmented memories rushed into my mind.

Naomi was weak, frail, passive. She was prey but, for whatever reason, Sophia had actually felt protective toward her. She expressed this in her usual fucked-up way, by pushing and abusing the girl so she'd toughen up. Apparently that was another reason she'd chosen to go after criminals instead of just exterminating the "weak" indiscriminately: by getting rid of threats, she was (in a roundabout way) making her sister safer.

"Yeah," I groused, rubbing the side of my head. "Nightmares. Threw myself out of bed. I'm fine, though." Since Sophia was gone, I figured I could leave the little girl with a good memory or two. Keeping the same sour expression and gruff tone, I ruffled Naomi's frizzy hair. "I don't say this often – maybe never said it – but you're a good kid."

The littlest Hess tilted her head. "You feeling okay?"

"I bonked my head, so don't get used to it. Now outta my room and back to bed." I gave her a gentle shove, just enough force to make her stumble a little but hopefully not so much that she fell. Waiting a fraction of a second to ensure that Naomi didn't get hurt, I shut and re-locked the door.

It was time to pack.

(BREAK)

In the end, I'd taken Sophia's computer and cell phone as well as her Shadow Stalker costume and a small cache of money she'd kept hidden in a hollow bedpost. The phone was the riskiest thing to take, but I was just going to transfer any interesting texts to email and forward them to myself, then destroy it on the way home. Before leaving, I decided to absorb the costume as well. If I could further perfect my ability to select clothing, I could probably design a nifty costume from the remnants of hers. I climbed out the window, shutting it behind me and managing to extrude a tendril of my essence to lock it as well.

Dad tended to get up early on business days so I needed to get home, get my shit hidden and get in bed before he awoke, just in case he decided to check in on me. Honestly, I probably shouldn't have worried. Since our lawsuit had been thrown out he'd basically turned into a zombie, going through the motions of life with none of the spark. It tore me apart inside to see him like that, but it showed me a fundamental difference between the two of us: we were both passive, but when pressed he only shrunk further away. When I could no longer take it, I did something about it. If my father had been able to channel his grief into passion, to genuinely fight for his dream of restoring the Bay, I had little doubt he could have successfully lobbied the ferry into being rebuilt. If he'd used his brain, he could have sold the wreckage of the boat graveyard to some industry or Tinker and helped to reopen local shipping. Instead he just slogged back and forth, a broken shell of a man.

Unlike Sophia, I didn't hate him for it. I felt bad for him, wishing I could somehow give him the courage to act. Despite the fact that he was family, however, I couldn't make him my priority. The gangs still threatened the Dockworkers' Union and any improvements therein would certainly draw attention from the violent leeches.

While I didn't actually need to sleep – at least, it hadn't caused any detrimental effects that I'd noticed – it was still restful and helped my brain to recharge. I stuffed the backpack full of Sophia's old things under my bed, safely out of sight, and tucked myself in. I shifted back to my own body, overlaid Sophia's pajamas, and ordered my mind to drift off. In the morning, I'd start planning.

(BREAK)

Awakening with purpose and the power to affect change was...well, I wasn't religious but I suppose I could compare it to being born again. I saw the sunlight with new eyes, heard the birds' song and could actually appreciate the beauty of nature. I opened the window, took in a deep breath of the chilly sea air, and smiled.

"Alright," I nodded to myself, "down to business."

First things first, the computer had to go. I opened it up and typed in the password on reflex. I was disappointed to find that there wasn't anything useful or incriminating on the thing so, after double-checking, I erased the hard disk and took the laptop with me. Once I was a sufficient distance from home, I slipped into an alley and shifted into Sophia's body. It wasn't a long trek to a pawn shop in relatively neutral territory, where I managed to haggle for two hundred fifty dollars. The thing was worth more even to trade in, I knew, but I didn't need too many questions. With Sophia's cash stash, I now had almost four hundred. That would take some of the burden off my father.

Another short jog and I'd put on a different face. Charlotte, I think her name was: a relatively average-looking girl who probably wouldn't stand out to most people. I wished I could mix facial features like I could clothing, but unfortunately my power wasn't cooperating. Regardless, I had a 'new cape' costume in mind for when I found trouble. It was time to go on patrol.

I opted to stay in blue-tagged areas for now. I still didn't fully understand what I could do, and I didn't want to risk riling up Lung or the Empire. In truth I was more scared of E88 than I was of Lung; he was the biggest threat in Brockton Bay, sure, but he was only one person and couldn't be everywhere at once. Empire Eighty-Eight, on the other hand, had a stable of around twenty parahumans at any given time. Pound-for-pound, they were the single most powerful force in the city and, worse still, this meant they could spare some capes to go hunting for any new threats that might pop up.

The Merchants were a nomadic gang, moving from place to place, really just filling in the cracks left by wars between the two real criminal powers in the Bay. Years back, when they'd had a stable base of operations, they'd called themselves the Archer's Bridge Merchants. Now the bridge was a crumbling hulk and the Merchants had long since been forced away from their namesake to the point that they'd pretty much dropped the location entirely from their name.

The Merchants seemed to revel in being human trash, the worst of the worst. 'Anything you can do, I can do sleazier' seemed to be their motto. The Empire and the ABB both sold drugs? The Merchants sold more, cheaper, and a wider selection. Of course, a lot of it was brewed in bathtubs and had about a 50/50 chance of death, but that didn't matter to junkies. Empire had dog fighting rings? The Merchants staged hobo versions of Mortal Kombat, offering free drugs to the winner to make the fights appealing. The ABB bought and sold human lives for slavery and sex trafficking? The Merchants tested the merchandise before shipping it out.

It was a difficult thing to say, even in my head, but at least the two big gangs had honor and some sort of code. The Merchants were the most vile poison here in Brockton Bay, chipping away at the city's very humanity and preying on the weak and innocent. Even if they weren't the weakest group, I'd still have chosen to destroy them first.

The Merchants' leader and his lieutenants were all capes, and they'd recently lost one of their number. I was thankful, because it seemed like Moist would've been the biggest problem for me. He'd had the ability to transform himself into a kind of sludge and used it to pour into targets' lungs, suffocating them into unconsciousness or death. Turned out, he could be evaporated to death and Lung had cooked him in the Merchants' last attempt to grab new territory. Remaining were Mush, who could make armor out of garbage; Squealer, the Merchants' resident Tinker and getaway driver; and the leader Skidmark, who could layer some sort of directional forcefield. Reading about it on PHO, it reminded me of those little Hot Wheels launchers you'd send the little cars through to get them the speed necessary to go through the loops.

I was basically stuck with following the graffiti and hoping for the best. People didn't call for help anymore when they were accosted; it so rarely worked as to be negligible, and crying out tended to just make them hurt you worse. Yet again I cut through an alley, this time only my clothes shifting: from a generic tee and pants, I now wore a baggy hoodie, black jeans and a bandana over my mouth and nose, the perfect look for a cape just starting out. With any luck it'd make the Merchant capes think they had an advantage.

After about an hour of mostly aimless wandering, I heard the telltale sounds of a beating. I reflexively checked to make sure my hoodie and bandana would stay up, before feeling very foolish as I remembered they were technically a manifestation of my power. Following the rhythmic smack-and-ping of metal on flesh, I came to a disused back lot and found something worse than a simple beating. The Merchants were staging another one of their hobo fights, this time having armed each "combatant" with a tire iron so they could more easily kill one another. Only a handful of betters were actually there to spectate, but one of the Merchants held a camera that was probably being used to broadcast the event to the rest of the audience. I'd have to take him out first, or at least very early: it wouldn't do for my power to get caught on camera.

Since everyone was focused on the blood sport, they wouldn't be looking up. The surrounding buildings were only one or two stories but they'd still get me a better angle from which to attack. I knew I was superhumanly strong now, so I crouched and flexed my legs, preparing to launch myself as best I could. Before I could push off, however, something bizarre happened: tendrils of essence seemed to flow down my body, wreathing my legs in a red-black version of 1980s leg warmers. Additional tendrils stuck out, almost looking like springs, and when I finally pushed off the ground I was propelled into the air like a shot. The sudden acceleration and amazing height I gained from a single jump left me disoriented and I plummeted back down, smacking onto the building like a belly-flop. It hurt, but not nearly as much as getting shot, and I opted to wait for a few minutes just in case anyone had decided to pay attention to the noise.

I took the downtime to gather my thoughts, acknowledging that plummeting about twenty feet and landing in what was probably the most painful way possible only caused a minor sting that had already faded. I didn't know exactly how durable I was – and I wasn't exactly in the mood to test – but it at least gave me confidence that I could take a few gunshots with no adverse effect. I finally crawled to the edge of the roof and peered over, getting the cameraman in my sights. Figuring he was close enough to jump without accidentally overshooting the mark, I tucked my legs beneath me, gripped the roof like a perch, and leapt.

My impact was announced by the crackling crunch of pulverized bone. If my target hadn't been killed instantly by the impact, he probably wished he had. Taking care to crush the camera beneath my foot as I stood, I cast a quick glance around the assembled audience, deciding which route to take. I didn't waste time monologuing or declaring that they were under arrest; that wasn't what this was about. To these people, death was entertainment. I'd see if it was as much fun when the lives taken were their own. I pushed off the street, my feet carving divots in the asphalt, and hurtled into the most concentrated group. I grabbed ahold of whatever I could, hurling bodies into one another and crushing limbs into paste. I recalled an article (though I couldn't remember whether I'd read it or if Sophia had) interviewing a career criminal who gladly went to jail for misdemeanors, because it got him free food, medical and dental care. If I was to send a message to the parasites feeding on the innocents of this city, it wasn't going to be through giving people vacations.

The initial impact had left the entire group surprised and confused. Now, as I tore my way through them, the Merchants and their customers opened fire. Bullets riddled me and my body began reflexively absorbing shorn limbs and chunks of viscera to reinforce any wounds I received. I almost felt ashamed, that this was too easy, as I tore my way through the small crowd. A simple sweep of my arm and I dug my fingers into a victim; a squeeze and a jerk tore out their internal organs, a tug instead used the entire body as a weapon to bludgeon others. Regardless, before long only four people stood in the lot: me, the two homeless men, and the final Merchant. He'd staggered away from the rest of the group, firing wildly and inadvertently backing himself into a corner. He was really just a boy, only a few years older than me. It was clear he was a customer as well as a dealer, his bloodshot eyes glazed over with the remnants of his last high and his body thin and shaky from choosing drugs over food.

"Wh-what the fuck are you?" he managed to whimper.

I couldn't help myself, the reply slipping out before I could stop. I'd always wanted to be a hero when I was a kid, and a big part of that was the monologuing and one-liners. Although, in this case, my reply was a bit darker. "I am become death, destroyer of worlds." With that quote from Oppenheimer, I slammed my palm against his skull and crushed him against the wall.

I turned around just in time to receive a tire iron to the face. Both homeless men jumped me and began indiscriminately battering with their weapons. Through their frenzied ramblings, I could make out that instead of being thankful for saving their lives they were enraged that they'd no longer get their drugs. Because the strikes were only a nuisance I was able to focus and figure out where they'd hit next, lashing out to catch the weapons before they could impact. "What the hell is the matter with you?" My tone was icy and scolding. "I've made certain that both of you will live and you're angry that one of you didn't die? That you didn't get your drugs, which had a good chance of killing you anyway?" I bent the metal in my hands. "You've both been given a new lease on life. What will you do with it? Go out and mug somebody, maybe even kill them, just to get some money for your next fix?" I stepped forward, leveraging the weapons down, bringing them to this body's eye level. "Tell me," I hissed, "have you given up hope, or do you just care that little for human life?"

Neither responded, but they didn't have to. I could see the answer in their eyes. Sophia might have been a monster but her memories continued to be useful. While I'd gone out of my way to avoid junkies, as Shadow Stalker she'd beaten more than a few of them into unconsciousness. The frenzied ones, the ones who'd basically become animals, had that same look in their eyes. There was little to no hope of rehabilitation and would most likely hurt others if I let them go. I wasn't going to have innocent blood on my hands just to give these two a chance; there were plenty of people, genuine victims, who needed my sympathy and protection far more.

"Alright then," I stated, my voice flat. I wrenched the tire iron from each man's hands before driving it back up, punching through their skulls in synch. My body absorbed the excess viscera but I pulled back before I could consume their entire bodies. I didn't want those memories.

Dashing through the nearest alleyway, I shifted back into my regular Charlotte appearance and made certain to keep my speed to the human norm. That much gunfire was certain to attract attention and I didn't need to be in the spotlight.

Guilt gnawed at me for my disposal of the bums, but I eventually concluded that it was the best of bad options. If I'd left them alive and they'd raped or killed people in the process of mugging them, I'd have felt many times worse than I did now. Life was imperfect, and life in Brockton Bay was often short and harsh. Until the monsters and predators were gone, I'd have to be a kingsnake, a hunter of hunters, and harden my heart in order to get the job done.

 _Besides,_ I said to myself, _I have other outlets for my aggression._ It was only a couple hours until school let out at Winslow High, after all.


	4. Contagion 04

**Contagion 1.04**

Another advantage to having Sophia's memories was that I now had Emma's schedule memorized. As such, I knew just how much time I had before Zoe Barnes came to pick her up. One shift and I was again wearing Sophia's face, dashing at what I estimated to be the peak of human speed.

Amazingly, Winslow had at one time been a shining example of the public education system. Located as it was at the intersection of several population centers, it was a mecca of knowledge and achievement. Of course, urban areas are always the first to fall apart when times get hard so Winslow's location had shifted almost overnight from an advantage to a mortal failing. Of course, once the Wards program started up and Arcadia was built as a haven, all of the affluent families flocked there and left Winslow to further decay.

What disgusts me about people is their tendency to pull rather than climb. What I mean by this is that, instead of bettering oneself, it seems that your average person would prefer to make other people's lives hell and cause them to fail. Misery loves company, as the old adage states, and that's easy to see in such circumstances. Mostly I believe it stems from a refusal to acknowledge personal inadequacies: working to be better requires first the recognition that one can in fact be better. Instead, harming others to ruin their opportunities makes the abuser feel that they are superior, since they haven't been broken.

For the first time, however, I was thankful that I had been a good friend. My grades had been stellar enough to justify applying to Arcadia, but Emma was never as book-smart as me. In order to remain with my best friend since childhood, I had opted to simply attend Winslow. After my mother died and Emma began torturing me, I had regretted that decision more than everything else save one thing: I had been the one talking to my mother when the SUV plowed into her. I heard her final screams of pain and knew, unequivocally, that I was responsible. If it hadn't been for my love of my father, I would have taken my own life long ago. But to help support him I had endured the bullying and hatred.

Now, though, I understood. People claim that everything happens for a reason. While I don't believe in some sort of cosmic plan, I do believe in...I suppose you could call it reverse providence. To simplify, I believe that we can take our circumstances and make something greater than the sum of our experiences. In my case, all of the pain and suffering I'd experienced gave me an intimate understanding of the darker parts of the human condition. Had I just gone to Arcadia, I might have led a happy life but would likely have never affected the world as a whole. Now, though? I had the power and determination to fix things. My pain was a price I'd gladly pay for the chance to fix the broken aspects of this world. Maybe nobody else would have to suffer as I had. It was a pipe dream, really, but that kind of hope kept me moving.

(BREAK)

Emma was easy to spot. Her crimson tresses spilled down her back, barely obscuring the impressive curvature of her body. She stood tall for someone her age, 5'7" – looming over most girls. Except me, of course. As Sophia, however, I felt somewhat short and plain. Hess had more curves than my normal body, but she seemed flat in comparison to the redhead. I strode soundlessly behind her and clapped my hand over her mouth and nose. "Quiet, Emma," Sophia's voice hissed. "We're in deep shit."

Emma nodded and I removed my hand. She turned to face me, eyes hard. "What's wrong? Taylor killed herself and implicated us or something?"

I blinked. "Hebert? No, I don't think so. Haven't heard anything like that. Look, walk with me." I nodded to a piece of broken fencing, where dealers would slip inside school grounds to ply their wares. "The walls have ears, after all." I kept my voice low, waiting until we were nearly to the fence. "I've got reason to believe someone figured out my little secret."

Her blue eyes went wide and the color drained from her already pale skin. "Oh god, how?"

"I don't know, but I got a disturbing message on my phone. I think they might go after you to get to me." We were in the shadows now. "Shh!" I grabbed her face again, gently pushing her into the shadows. I looked back and forth, our bodies pressed together, Sophia's darker skin acting as camouflage for Emma. This was the perfect position: even a direct observer would be hard-pressed to tell what was happening.

My hand melted and began flowing up into Emma's nasal cavity. She began to choke and cough, trying to protest, but I kept my grip tight over her mouth. I punched through the lining of her throat, surging into her spinal column and up to her brain. In her last moments of life, I shifted back into my true self, locking eyes with her. My expression was cold, not even delighting in her death like Sophia might have. This was vengeance, but it was also justice. More than that, it was duty. I pushed forward, pressing into and through Emma's body as it liquefied. I slumped against the wall, bracing myself for the surge of memories.

" _Eyes, nose, lips... You can hide the ears with your hair, so let's start there." The words still haunted me at night. I'd survived, but only because of Sophia's intervention. I needed to be stronger, and the first point of order was to destroy everything that made me weak. Meek little Taylor was nothing but a burden on me, always wanting to be nice, to be submissive. She was going to drag me down; I couldn't just cut her loose or she'd keep pursuing me. I had to utterly break her._

 _I wasn't a fighter: I didn't have the build or demeanor for it. But I did have the drive to succeed and I was damn good-looking. A few more minor modeling gigs and I could eventually get a contract when I turned 18, get the hell out of this shithole and become successful. Then I wouldn't need to fight people to get my way. My money and sex appeal would become my weapons._

 _I can't believe Taylor tried to sue me and the school. Not only was she after me, but she was going to out Sophia. Well, we nipped that in the bud. It was easy enough to paint Taylor as schizophrenic, broken by her mother's death and convinced the world was out to get her. With Blackwell and staff backing us up – all it took for their cooperation was the paltry sum they got for housing a Ward – the PRT's director opted to shut down the case rather than risk one of her Wards. Especially a black former vigilante in Empire Eighty-Eight's stomping grounds? No way was she going to allow that to get out._

I shook my head and spat in disgust. Such a shallow, pathetic excuse for a person. That experience had been enough to completely change her? It had taken my mother's death and nearly two years of constant abuse from my former best friend to even _begin_ to break me. I sidled back through the fence, wincing at the unfamiliar sensation of the ragged chain-link scraping against my chest. _Note to self, be aware of Emma's D-cups. They get in the way._ I made my way to the front of the school and waited for the blue Mercedes. Unslinging my backpack from my shoulder, I hopped inside. "Hey mom," I chirped to Zoe Barnes. God, it made me feel slimy to call her 'mom'.

It struck me as odd how much Emma stood out from her family. Alan was tall, broad and dark, black hair and tan skin. Zoe was blonde and petite, and Emma's little sister Anne was brunette and seemed to have a build similar to her mother. Emma, on the other hand, was already as tall as her mother and curved like an hourglass. It made me suspicious that one of the Barneses had been dipping their pen in another inkwell. "Hey hon," Zoe smiled. "So how was your day?"

"Okay, I guess," I replied with a little sigh. "Mr. G wasted our time today, though. He gave us another dumb lecture about parahuman achievements instead of cape origin theory like he was supposed to." In a stage whisper, I continued, "I'm starting to think he's not qualified to teach parahuman studies."

Zoe pursed her full pink lips. "Want me to schedule a parent-teacher conference?"

Oh, that was funny. I actually had to force myself to keep from laughing. While Sophia had never acted on it, it seemed she'd had a little crush on the Barnes matriarch. "Let's see if he shapes up tomorrow; it'll be Friday, after all. If not, then you can call him on it."

"Alright, sweetie. We can wait a day."

I pulled out a textbook and pretended to read, running my plans back and forth in my mind. There were no memories of Zoe or Anne being part of the schemes, so I'd need to keep them out of the line of fire.

(BREAK)

The most disconcerting thing I'd done so far was pretending to be Emma. I'd literally stepped into her life, my years of closeness with her allowing me to perfectly imitate her mannerisms. I bantered with Zoe and Anne, had a little snack, and watched TV while waiting for Alan to return home. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone and left me yet again with the psychosomatic feeling of a churning stomach.

What was worst was that, even for a few minutes, I'd thought about just staying like this. Emma was happy, wealthy, beautiful. She had a safe future and a plan. Taylor Hebert could have just shriveled up and disappeared and Emma Barnes could have lived a full life. It was tempting, so sorely tempting. But then I realized that I'd be living every day with Alan Barnes, the corrupt and evil man who'd sold out an innocent child, the girl who'd been a niece to him, and the man who'd been like a brother, solely to keep his daughter from being punished for her sadistic actions. No, I could not live with myself without exacting justice.

Alan finally got home before dinner, all smiles and happiness for his family. There wasn't even a twinge of guilt or self-loathing evident for his horrific treatment of the Heberts, of us. After we exchanged hugs and pleasantries, I slunk up to his side to whisper into his ear. "Dad, I need to talk to you. About things with, um, Sophia."

He locked eyes with me and gave a solemn nod. "Zoe, Anne honey, give us a second. Emma and I have to chat a little."

Zoe nodded and smiled. I was sure they'd spun her a long nonsense story about Emma needing her father's shoulder to cry on with her old friend going insane. I wanted to slap that vacant-eyed smile off her face. "Okay. Anne, sweetie, want to help me with the garlic bread?"

I followed Alan up the stairs to his office, away from prying ears. Once the door was shut and he was firmly seated, he locked eyes with me. "I take it this isn't just a pleasant update about your friend."

I tilted my head. "No, it's not. I was wondering something...call it soul-searching, maybe, but, why did you let Sophia and me get away with all of it? I mean, Taylor was like my sister, Danny was like your brother, and yet you just cut them loose. So, why? You knew what was going on, so why didn't you stop me before it got this bad?"

"Well," he stammered, apparently not having given thought to why he'd tacitly approved Emma's actions, "you deserve to be happy. You weren't in danger, so I didn't see a reason to–"

"Didn't see a reason to intervene, to protect your niece in all but name? Blood is thicker than water, and all that, but you can't be bothered to take care of your loved ones and teach them?" I was snarling now, feeling tendrils of essence curling within me. "Of course, since you shirk responsibility I can understand why you'd encourage your daughter to do the same."

Alan Barnes looking slack-jawed was a memory I'd savor for a long time. He blinked and tried to compose himself. "Look, Emma, I don't know what's brought this on, but if you're feeling upset about Taylor you can always–"

The white-hot rage within me had been replaced by the calm ice of hatred. I interlaced my fingers and propped up my feet on his desk, eyes still locked on his own. "I could what, apologize? Tell her I feel so bad about waging a terror campaign against her for two years? 'Oh well, too bad about losing your mom and ending up destitute. Wanna go grab a burger?' Do you give no thought to the consequences of your actions, or do you just trust that you can bullshit and manipulate the law to get you out of any trouble you find yourself in?"

This time I didn't permit a response. I shot out my hand and a thick tendril plastered his mouth shut. My body changed back to my original form. "Originally Emma was my prime target. Sophia was first, since she was the violent one who landed me in the hospital, but she was also a trial run since she lived in a bad neighborhood. Madison, she's barely more than a nuisance. I'll get around to her on my own time. But Emma? She was my Brutus, the true betrayer. Or so I thought. Y'see," I gestured casually with my other hand, my tone congenial as though we were having a friendly conversation, "Emma was a stupid child. Yes, _was._ She's dead now. I've been playing her role since before Zoe brought me home. But she's a kid. She did horrible things but I can't hold her fully responsible. She was traumatized and, while that doesn't outright excuse her actions, it makes them...I suppose I could say less evil."

I paused to snicker. "You, though? You're an adult, a father, fully aware of your responsibilities to your family. Yet you threw away one of your oldest friendships and utterly destroyed me and my father for no reason other than to keep your daughter from facing the consequences of her sadism." The tendril wrapped around the back of his head and started to squeeze. "So she became a means to an end. Oh, I still killed her. Because she deserved it. But now, she was my ticket to get to you. I told you this whole story so you can understand, so I can see the fear in your eyes, before you die. You're not going to get the chance to live with your actions, to miraculously reform. You're–"

And this time I was interrupted. Little Anne Barnes, whom I'd always suspected had been named in honor of my mother – yet another blazing example of Alan's betrayal – burst through the door. "No! Leave him alone!" With her scream of protest, panicked and indignant, I could hear Zoe's footsteps as she hurried to us.

"Fuck me," I sighed. I'd wanted to leave the mother and daughter alone, as they hadn't directly wronged me. Not only would they have reported a parahuman murderer, but Anne had seen my real face "Nothing for it now." I hurled Alan across the room, his bulk smashing into and almost through the opposite wall. The desk shattered when I pushed off of it. I made Anne's death quick, simply tearing her in half and devouring her body before she could suffer much. Memories tried to rush to the surface of my mind but I forced them down, barely losing any momentum as I rushed out the door and tackled Zoe. The tumble down the stairs broke her body and I jogged back up, bits of viscera absorbing into me.

Alan was just staggering to his feet when I returned. I was nearly as tall as he was, so with my strength it was no trouble to seize him by the neck and lift him against the wall. "It's funny how things work out," I said, my expression blank and my voice monotone. "If you'd just been a responsible father and watched over your daughter, steered her on the right path, I would never have triggered. If I hadn't triggered, your entire family wouldn't have died. People call it the butterfly effect. That has a nice ring to it."

I drove my fist through Alan's ribcage and let the tendrils writhe. Once I was done hollowing him out and began to consume his corpse, the blood splatter on the wall resembled the wings of a butterfly.

Shifting back to Sophia for her fingerprints, I casually rifled through the Barneses' things and took anything that looked valuable and untraceable. I'd be able to drain Alan's bank account tomorrow.

Satisfied, I donned the Shadow Stalker outfit and left through the front door, locking it with their keys which I promptly tossed into a nearby storm drain.

Leaping onto the roof, I began my run back home. If Dad had noticed I wasn't home, I'd have to come up with a story. Regardless, it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Madison could wait for now; she was small fry. My next targets were the three capes leading the Merchants. Once they were gone, the real challenge would be taking down the Empire and Lung.

I had two advantages over them, however: first, they didn't know I existed. Second, each criminal I consumed would give me more information. By the time I confronted them directly, I'd be ready.


	5. Contagion 05

**A/N:** This chapter went through a lot of rewrites. Unlike Queen of the Swarm, I didn't (and still don't, really) have an overall plan for this story. It was, and remains, more of an exercise to see how I can manage a darker story. Hopefully this will answer some of the questions from the previous chapter and build anticipation for the next.

 **Contagion 1.05**

I slipped inside the front door and found my father asleep on one of the few pieces of furniture we still owned, an understuffed red armchair. A book lay folded in his lap and the lamp beside him was still on. He'd drifted off while waiting for me.

I tiptoed up and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. That was what I loved about him: he tried. While he didn't often succeed and had only grown more passive since Mom's death, he still tried. His eyes fluttered open. "Hey Dad," I whispered.

He groaned, yawning and stretching. "Mgh...hey, little owl. Where were you?"

"I was doing some self-study at the library." The lie rolled easily off my tongue. "When they closed for the night, I checked out a couple books and set up at Fugly Bob's. I guess I lost track of time." That kind of casual deception wasn't a strength of mine. Emma and Alan Barnes, however, they were fantastic liars.

That thought jarred me, and Dad could feel my body stiffen. I'd killed two innocent people tonight, their only crimes being ignorance of their loved ones' actions. And I'd already declared ignorance to be unworthy of blame. I hadn't wanted to torture my victims, only to exact justice. Yet I'd tormented Alan instead of just killing him, and my monologuing had led to two others dying. I was already a killer, yes, but now I was a murderer. If I could call on Emma and Alan's talent for untruth without even realizing it, had I been drawing from the cruelty and inhumanity of the others I'd consumed? Was I...becoming a conglomerate of their minds? Would I even still be me if I continued on like this?

My nervousness had only continued to grow and I knew my father wouldn't let it slide. It was time for a half-truth. "Dad? Would...would you still love me if I did something...bad?" I couldn't stop my voice from shaking. I hoped I knew his answer, but it was still a terrifying question to ask.

"Of course I would, kiddo. Did...did you do something?"

"I got us some money to help out, get the bill collectors off us." He paled and I realized his first thought. Especially considering both the ABB and Merchants lurked nearby, it was a disturbingly reasonable thought. "No, Dad," I hurriedly protested, "nothing like that. I...stole it. From bad people. They'll never know I was the one who took it, and I just...I couldn't justify calling the police. The law has let us down; they owe us a debt. I figure this makes it square." The lie flowed from me without any effort, which only chilled me further.

He nodded, his shining eyes still processing the information. "And...I can't convince you to turn it over to the police?"

I didn't need to lie now. "I'd rather burn it all than let it go to a system so corrupt that it'd throw out charges of abuse just because the accused is wealthy."

My father pursed his lips. He was uncomfortable with the idea, that much I had expected, but we both knew that it was only a matter of time before we lost the house. "...Look, let's take a look at it, make sure it's not marked or anything, and then...it feels wrong but we need the money. Maybe we can give any excess to charity or something."

We made minor small talk while walking to our bedrooms and I bade him goodnight. Tomorrow I'd follow through on my plans to withdraw from Alan's bank account.

(BREAK)

As I lay in bed, the introductory paragraph from _The Cask of Amontillado_ ran through my mind. I would be lying if I hadn't thought of punishing my tormentors in a manner akin to that in the story, but moreover my concept of vengeance had been formed by that opening paragraph: "A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser." From that principle, I had taken two innocent lives tonight. Lying there, in the quiet, I lived Zoe and Anne Barnes' lives. Zoe was foolish and vapid, but she was never anything less than kind. Had she taken the time to scrutinize her family's actions, she would have denounced them, turned whistleblower. Anne was just a preteen who loved her family and idolized her big sister, placing Emma on a pedestal.

Had I simply executed Emma and Alan, I could have called it justice. But I'd committed murder tonight; it was no longer justice, only revenge and an animal sense of self-preservation. Those two had died just so I could stay hidden, and I wouldn't have ever needed to kill them if I'd just done my duty and moved on. I'd reveled in Alan's fear in a way I'd resolved never to do. Had that been me going against my principles? Or was it the personalities of the evil people I'd consumed? Sophia's memories continued to rise unbidden...was I forever cursed with her cruelty?

No. I will not become a monster. Tonight had been a learning experience for me. While I was already a killer, tonight had made me a murderer. The acts left a hole in my heart, but their sacrifices wouldn't be in vain. With that raw kindness within me now, I could better balance the darkness and sadism that had been building within me. No, protecting my identity wasn't worth taking innocent lives. I had to draw a line between good and evil, and resolve to never cross it. Of course, my moral line was probably further than most others', as I was still resolved to eliminate the cancer infesting my home. That said, I could no longer wantonly absorb others. If their personalities could influence mine even after death, then I had to be very careful regarding what I allowed to join my memories.

"Oh god," I gasped, rolling out of bed and collapsing on the floor. While my body no longer had any real organs, it still had the psychosomatic reactions of a human body and I began dry-heaving. The people who'd made my life a living hell, they were inside me. I was stuck with them forever. I pulled the sheet off my bed and sobbed into it, muffling my noises. I could feel them laughing at me, having the eternal last laugh as they punished me from beyond the mortal coil, torturing me for ever having the gall to stand up for myself. _I should have just posed as Emma,_ my traitorous mind declared. I had difficulty arguing. Emma had a future for herself; Taylor was a broken person assembled from the memories and idiosyncrasies of some of Brockton Bay's cruelest and most degenerate citizens.

I couldn't keep going like this. Eventually I would lose myself and become a plague on the world. My powers, driven by an evil hive mind? It would be a nightmare potentially worse than the Endbringers. I needed to stop myself.

I couldn't tell my father. I couldn't deal with his reaction. I'd leave him the money and a note, and just leave.

(BREAK)

The next day, Alan Barnes shocked his bank by demanding a full withdrawal in cash. Haggard and nervous, he explained that he believed someone was targeting him and he needed to get out of the city without a trace. He spent three hours in the vault, under guard, while the managers processed the order and obtained the necessary funds. Alan left with two hundred thousand dollars in a blue duffel bag and vanished into the crowd.

An hour or so later, a disheveled-looking man slipped into the Hebert household and stuffed a blue duffel bag underneath Danny Hebert's bed. He then left an ambiguous note in Taylor Hebert's handwriting, stating her unconditional love for her father before insisting that she had to leave for both their sakes. She had done terrible things and couldn't bear to tell him the full extent of her actions.

Finally, Taylor Hebert exited her home. She didn't return.

(BREAK)

I had been wrong about my powers, earlier. I wasn't more than human: I was less. I was just an animal pretending to be a person. Even an animal can be loyal, however, and I still had a duty. I might be past help but that didn't mean I was useless. If I was already damned, so be it, but I could protect others from ending up as I had. I now had a plan. Once I'd taken down the gangs, I'd turn myself in to the Protectorate. They could throw me in the Birdcage, execute me, whatever they wanted. But for now, I had a job to do.

 _I'm sorry, Zoe. Anne. I won't let your deaths be meaningless._

The Merchants were still at the top of my list. Their infestation had to be rooted out in order for the city to begin healing. They were step one. I wandered the seedier parts of the city until I heard the sound of an oversized engine. That meant only one thing: Squealer.

I hurried along the rooftops and followed the roar, tracking the Merchants to what passed for a clearing. It was actually a swathe of leveled warehouses, all concrete and debris, but it served their purposes. Skidmark and Mush hopped off the metal abomination that superficially resembled some sort of classic car while Squealer lounged behind the wheel. Gathered around them was the largest group of Merchants I'd ever seen, at least two dozen men and women.

Skidmark popped a bottle of cheap champagne and began pouring it onto the ground. "This is for Moist," he hollered. "He died fighting the good fight, trying to beat back those slope-eyed cumrags!" He paused to take a swig of his own from the bottle. "Now, are we just gonna roll over and let them assfuck us?" A resounding, if slurred, 'No' was the response.

I dropped down to ground level and assumed the form of one of the Merchants I'd previously killed. I began to slowly make my way through the crowd.

"Are we gonna let them sit there, all smug, squatting on the very land Moist died for?" Another shout in the negative. "Fuckin' right we aren't! They don't get to have that hood! And if we can't take it, then nobody gets to have it!" He smashed the champagne on the ground and pulled out another bottle, this one cheap vodka with a rag sticking out of the top. "We burn it all! For Moist!"

"For Moist," the group chorused.

Once I made it to the front, I didn't hesitate. I lunged out and grabbed Skidmark by the shoulder, crushing his collarbone, and thrust my hand beneath his jaw. His neck made a series of wet cracks and he fell limp to the floor.

"What the fuck!?"

Before the phrase had time to finish, I was already moving, heading for Mush. He called up the debris into a spiked shield at the last second, too close for me to dodge. My body tested his trash-o-kinesis but he managed to impale me on the spikes, lift me in the air to deny my leverage, and hurl me back to the ground.

I pushed myself back to my feet and scowled. This would be harder than I'd thought, particularly with the rest of the gang here as well. _I did not think this through_. I'd been so intent on redemption through action that I hadn't stopped to plan. That had been my problem this entire time. I could've cozied up to Emma as Sophia, pumped her for information and only killed her once I had what I wanted. I could have convinced Alan to go for a walk or something with his pretty little princess. Instead I'd just charged in, had some very questionable 'fun', and gotten innocent people killed.

Mush's shield broke in half, turning into bladed pseudo-arms. He swiped at me, forcing me back, just as I heard the whine of gears.

Movies really downplay the sound of a gunshot. Just the gunpowder's explosion is bad enough, but the sonic boom is just shy of deafening. So, when there's a gatling gun firing hundreds of rounds, people are guaranteed to have their eardrums burst. The rounds tore through me, splattering my essence across the concrete and onto the unpowered Merchants. I could feel myself fading and, on instinct, reached out.

Tendrils burst from the men and women who'd been sprayed with my viscera, lancing to me and draining their bodies' contents to fuel my regeneration. Mush severed most of the tendrils and the bodies seemed to dissolve, quickly congealing into a pinkish stain on the floor.

I threw a punch at Mush, remembering how I'd extended and contorted my hand to silence Emma and Alan, but kept my fingers at the end of it. I launched my hand like a spear, which he once again severed. The bullets were starting to hurt again; my regeneration was stalling and I was in true danger once more. I leapt backward, up onto the nearest building, and then jumped again before Squealer could get a bead on me. I landed behind her vehicle and was about to pounce when I was definitively reminded that she was in _a vehicle_. Squealer threw the monstrosity into reverse and ran me down, grinding the tires and gears over me again and again.

The pain was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. My body was being ripped apart: every time it tried to restore itself, it was rent asunder yet again in new and exciting ways. I let myself liquefy, my essence getting churned inside the vehicle. I lost track of so much of myself; I could feel myself dying. In a last-ditch effort, I _pushed_ the memories and minds of those hateful beings into the majority of my essence before using that mass to jettison myself free and splash onto the ground. I had no idea if it worked or not, because I didn't have the time to examine myself. I'd lost too much of my being and was drifting into unconsciousness. _I'm sorry, Dad. I tried_.

(BREAK)

The gray concrete was stained red, mutilated bodies strewn hither and yon. "What do you think," asked Battery. "Merchants tangled with a new cape?"

"That's my supposition," Armsmaster replied. "These shriveled...things aren't inherent to any parahuman on the blotter." He prodded one of the red-black protrusions with his halberd, an expression of disgust on his face. It reminded him of a slug that had died in the sun and shriveled up, but also like a leech. The way it was attached to a Merchant who looked like a drained bag of Capri Sun only furthered that comparison. "I suspect that the cape hit Skidmark first. Losing her romantic interest would have caused Squealer to lose control, hence the disregard for catching her own men in the crossfire."

Battery dropped to one knee. "There's a lot of congealed blood here, with a similar texture to those tentacles. With the tire marks, it looks like Squealer ran over our mystery cape and ground him into paste." There was no response. "Armsmaster?" She looked over to find him stooping beside another small puddle. "What's up?" she asked while jogging over.

"This patch is still giving a heat signature," he noted, tapping his visor. "It's been several hours, yet it's neither congealed nor cold." His halberd's blade slid to one side, revealing what looked like a compressed-air tank. "Collecting a sample for analysis." The tube sucked up the goop before hissing shut and announcing its completion with a pleasant 'ding'.

"You think this had something to do with the other Merchant massacre?"

"Quite possibly," Armsmaster intoned, eyeing the end of his halberd. "With any luck, we'll find out."


	6. Interlude: The Rig

**Interlude 1.x**

It was mocking him. Were he a less sane man, he'd have drawn a little cartoon face on it, a la _Castaway_ , a disdainfully superior sneer. He might do that anyway, as the jury-rigged containment system was varying degrees of bland and ugly and if he was going to spend so much time staring at it he might as well have some form of entertainment.

Armsmaster shook his head. The sleep deprivation was really getting to him but he just couldn't let go of that mystery. Suspended in a vacuum within what had once been a mason jar, a My First Chemistry Set's alembic, and a myriad of other miscellaneous parts was the current object of his obsession, a blob of goo.

Only further adding to his frustration, Dauntless stepped into the Protectorate lead's office. "Well, the tests are back," he declared in that irritatingly genuine tone of his. Dauntless was a bad enough example of the unfairness of powers, able to increase his capabilities at a steady rate while someone like Armsmaster faced diminishing returns as he discovered limits to his technology or budget, but he was made even worse by his attitude. The former police officer was obnoxiously secure with himself, holding no illusions of grandeur. He knew that he was only of average intelligence and would never be the type to lead, and he was fine with that. He was able to gently accept life, stroll through existence as reality's metaphorical C-average student, and continually grow more powerful; Armsmaster, on the other hand, had needed to fight and claw every step of the way for his achievements and he had less and less to show for it. His capabilities were reaching their limits, his body was beginning to show the first signs of age, and now he felt that even his mind was slipping with regards to the mystery of the damned goo.

Armsmaster did his best not to roll his eyes. The Protectorate's new golden boy was so feckless that he wouldn't even take the initiative to continue speaking. "...And? What did they say?" He didn't stop staring at the goop, trying to give it the evil eye until it surrendered.

"Sadly, not much. I only barely passed my biology requirements in college and even I can understand the results." He passed the folder to his superior. "The tissue is something nobody's ever seen before. Its cells are made up of only cell membrane and cytoplasm. Those dried-up tendrils are even worse: they've petrified, somehow, and the best way to describe them is, ah, 'crispy'."

Armsmaster flipped through to the lead scientist's notes. "So they can't figure how those tendrils could have done...whatever they did to the Merchants, as there are no nuclei, no chromosomes, no organelles of any kind, no means of even viral reproduction." He shot another glare at the jar. "Since you're apparently the messenger for today, any word from the Think Tank?"

Dauntless nodded. "Eye of Ra seems to be the only one with enough of a hunch to guess. He thinks it's a weapon, but he has no idea how dangerous it is or what it's made for." He shifted his weight from one foot to another. "But I'm wondering, since it's a Tinker weapon, what if it had self-destruct codes?"

Colin Wallis blinked at that. "Repeat that, Grant?"

Grant Hendricks, more commonly known as Dauntless, paused for a moment. "Uh, what if it had self-destruct codes?"

He couldn't deny it, "That's a decent idea. A security measure to deactivate once it had served its purpose would make sense, especially with something that can apparently dissolve a person. Not surprising that I didn't consider it, of course; bio-Tinkers tend to be showy and reckless. One with enough sense to program a shutdown in his virus could be a real threat."

"That doesn't explain Skidmark, though," Dauntless pointed out. "If he had this weapon, why attack Skidmark physically?"

"My initial theory was that there were two attackers present, one to draw the Merchants' attention – killing Skidmark – and one to deliver the actual weapon. I'm revising that to one attacker. It's now my supposition that the attacker _was_ the weapon, a bio-Tinker construct sent to draw fire. Perhaps it only activated upon being damaged, so killing the Merchants' leader in front of his lieutenants would definitely be a way to ensure the maximum number of targets ended up in the blast radius..." Colin scratched at his goatee. He began to pace, which was immediately recognizable to anyone who knew him as indicative of his thoughts coming together. "I had also thought that our Tinker had been secretly active for a while, based on the two different massacres: logically, this would mean at least two different creatures and a biological weapon.

"But, if the creature _was_ the biological weapon, things become significantly more simple and our timeline changes. If none of the victims in the first massacre were able to inflict more than superficial damage to the creature, it wouldn't have detonated. Or activated. You still have contacts in the police force, right?"

Grant blinked. Colin's rambling had become so rapid that the words started to blend together and it took him a moment to sort out the sentences, much less identify that he was being addressed. "I, yeah, I've still got some friends, people who were there when I triggered."

"Good. Too often there's friction between the BPD and PRT, so your status would be a good social lubricant. We're looking for drug-related deaths within the last...let's say three months, particularly with aggressive reactions from close friends or family. Anyone who had to be escorted from One Police Plaza would be a good place to start. I'll return to mining the Merchant crime records and look for similar incidents."

Dauntless nodded. "And you're sure we want to focus on the Merchants? All three major gangs deal drugs, after all. Could we be seeing a vigilante instead of an avenger? Maybe start low on the totem pole and climb up?"

"While it's a possibility, it's a distant one. There's a significant amount of distance between the two scenes and plenty of other gang activity occurred in the interim, particularly smaller events that could be disrupted in relative safety. If our killer was confident that he could leave no witnesses, as the hobo fight proved, then erasing a smaller gathering of Empire or ABB would lend blame to the other gangs rather than a new cape. No, I suspect our killer has a vendetta against the Merchants. Why else would they send their weapon after two large gatherings? This was an attempt to wipe them out."

(BREAK)

Within a more reinforced section of the Rig, scientists, engineers and experts in parahuman theory spent their days running experiments and simulations. From new nonlethal capture technology to the many, many proposals from Armsmaster and Kid Win, the profession could often lapse into tedium. So, despite the nervous energy that accompanied it, the science officers always relished the chance to study new parahuman powers or equipment. In this case, the new subject was a group of sealed containers, each with a small sample of the odd red-black biomass. The samples were grouped according to the tests to be performed: Environment, Damage, Interaction.

Eileen Morgan, Chief Science Officer on-duty, walked from one station to the next to observe the tests.

"Test sequence one," Brian muttered. The engineer was always a little too eager to break stuff, so setting him up with the Damage trials was a match made in purgatory. "We're already aware that the substance can be cut," he continued into the recorder, "but is the material capable of repair or reconstitution?" He manipulated the controls, one robotic hand holding the petri dish still while the other bisected the sample with an obsidian scalpel. Sure enough, the cut closed up, the substance merging back together. "Fascinating. There's no observable damage, not even breaching of cellular membranes or loss of mass. It's as though the sample is a gel, able to re-mold without any harm. Test two, multiple incisions." The scalpel split the blob once, twice, then three times, taking care to separate the portions ever so slightly. The goop seemed to deflate, flattening and covering the distance between its pieces and then returning to its original oblong shape.

"Holy crap," he exclaimed. "Er, let's strike that from the record. Ahem, amazing! Without a nucleus or any real way to determine damage or, well, anything like that, it still assessed its situation and reconstituted itself!" He glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, Eileen! You seeing this?"

She nodded with a smirk. "Indeed I am. You going to do more tests, or just keep slicing that goo?" Something that set Dr. Morgan apart from most of the scientists down in the pit, as other employees were wont to call it, was that she was quite clearly a 'people person'. Her stance was casual, arms folded in an expectant yet non-confrontational manner, her head tilted slightly forward; everything conveyed friendly interest and encouragement, which was one of the main reasons why most of her fellow scientists liked her best out of the several CSOs.

Brian chuckled. "Well, one more test, but I can put it aside and check in later." Four cuts in different sections of the sample resulted in eight differently-sized chunks of matter, which he then nudged as far apart from one another as he could manage. "We'll see how this resolves, but it might take time." Setting down the scalpel, the robotic arms pushed the petri dish aside to lock into a separate container. The push of a button sent another sample into the airtight box, this one on a more crystalline dish. "Test sequence two: kinetic impact."

Eileen moved on to the next station, Environment. Kashia was an overly pleasant and gregarious woman, rail-thin and wearing sharp-edged eyeglasses. "What do we have?" she asked the bubbly techie.

"Nothing much, I'm afraid. It doesn't really respond one way or the other to the various stimuli. It seems, if not immune, then at least unperturbed by extreme heat or cold, and things like fire and electricity only do nominal damage before it repairs itself."

The CSO nodded, tapping her lip. "Do we suspect it of violating thermodynamics?" There were a number of capes whose powers could do that, certainly, but a seemingly 'brainless' lump of matter shouldn't have been able to regenerate.

"The restored mass doesn't seem to come from anywhere, so I'd say yes." Kashia adjusted her glasses. "It seems to only ever restore itself to its original state, however, so thank god for small favors. If this was a 'The Blob' scenario..." The scientist trailed off and shuddered.

"Continue monitoring and update me if it begins to behave more...proactively," Eileen ordered before heading across the lab to the most isolated testing station. The Subject Interaction Chamber was a double-remote environment, the actual test subjects kept in a reinforced chamber and monitored only by camera. Mechanical arms manipulated by remote control brought in various items to interact with the subject. "How're we doing, Trevor?"

"Well, thus far it hasn't responded to any of the 'safer' samples; metal, wood, nothing nonliving. We might've had some activity when we placed a steak in there, but without vitals to monitor we can only make suppositions based on what we think was movement." The squat man tapped in a series of commands. "Next test is a lab rat. This is apparently a bioweapon so perhaps it only reacts to living creatures."

The robotic arm set down a container, pulling it open to reveal a confused-looking white rat. The rodent sniffed at the air. "Apparently the substance gives off a scent like blood," Trevor gave running commentary, "but it'd have to be much more concentrated for humans to identify it. To animals, though, I suspect it'd smell like an easy scavenge." The rat took a few cautious steps forward, sniffing at the blob of goo.

The resulting scene was like something out of a horror movie. One of the last of its kind to be released before parahumans made scenarios like that a disturbing possibility, John Carpenter's _The Thing_ ran through Eileen's mind. Dark red tendrils, the color of visceral blood, shot out of the subject and the entire glob reared up and over the rat like a tidal wave. The tendrils punctured the rat's flesh and the poor creature was turned inside-out in little more than a second, the sacrifice quickly being ripped apart before its shattered remains were engulfed. The blob settled back down, seemingly unaffected by its 'meal'. Probing showed that no apparent mass or volume had been added to the subject, nor had it developed any additional organelles. Without nuclei, RNA or any way to command its actions, the subject had devoured a rat in about as much time as it took to say "lab rat."

"Well," Trevor said after a long period of silence, "that ain't good."


	7. Contagion 06

**Contagion 1.06**

 _It really is a nice plot,_ I said to myself as I read aloud the headstone's engraving. "Annette Rose Hebert, Beloved Wife and Wonderful Mother. We'll never stop missing you."

I cast my eyes downward, through the gentle shade of the tree in whose shadow Mom's grave lay. The embalmers and...post mortem cosmeticians – or whatever they were called – had done a good job repairing her face, though I could still tell where PVC or metal had been inserted to restore the contours of my mother's cheek and jaw, the glass eye the only thing keeping her destroyed eye socket from caving in on itself.

I sat down beside the coffin and took her hand in mine. It wasn't even cold anymore; just room-temperature. Leaning forward, I moved her lifeless fingers through my hair. The tears fell and I didn't care to even try stopping them. "I just made things worse, Mom. I...I wanted to make things better, so that no other little girl could hurt like I did. But I didn't fix anything."

"What can I say, Hebert?" Sophia sat beside me, legs folded beneath her in some sort of martial-arts meditation pose. "Misery fucking loves you. Death and suffering follow you around like a lost puppy." She clapped me on the shoulder, the impact harsh, and her fingers dug in. "Embrace it: everybody has a purpose. Yours is to make the world a worse place."

"Fuck yourself and die, Hess," I snarled, batting her arm away.

Her laugh was cruel and condescending. "Beat me to the punch on that one, Tay-Tay. How's it feel to be a mass-murderer? Didn't even take you a week to go full villain." Shadow Stalker's mask glowered at me now. "And even with all the power you have, you're so weak and stupid you got yourself sucked up a vacuum cleaner. You really are _trash._ "

I don't know when, but at some point I'd leapt upon Sophia. My hands were covered in thick, visceral blood, her ribcage torn open before me. Her mask had come off and she had a sickeningly superior grin, as if my killing her was _her_ victory.

"This is your own fault," a baritone said from behind me. I turned and found Alan Barnes behind his desk. "I see it a lot in criminal cases. Kids get out from beneath their parents' thumb and want to try everything they were forbidden to do, but they forget or refuse to control themselves. Indulgence on junk food turns to alcohol turns to drugs, and then somehow they're part of a gang or have committed manslaughter. And they have no idea how they got from A to B." He thumbed through a file on his blotter. "You refused to let out your emotions, didn't even confide in your father. You tried to stifle all your emotions, and then you snapped. All that hate needed somewhere to go."

"And it went into us," Zoe said from behind me.

I turned and gagged. Anne was split in half, veins and ligaments the only thing connecting her left side to her right. Her eyes, glassy, bulged from her skull. Zoe was on the ground, her mangled body unable to stand. "What did we ever do to you? My only crime was not suspecting my daughter of being a psychopath. Anne hadn't done anything to wrong you even secondhand."

Anne rasped and gurgled, her voice barely audible through an endless death rattle. "You hurt my daddy. Why did you have to hurt him? Why did you hurt me?"

"And you wonder why I grew to hate you, Taylor."

That voice made me freeze. I turned to see Emma glowering at me from across the classroom. She strode over to me, her wide hips rolling with each step. "You're a monster. I saw that in you, tried to break you down so you wouldn't hurt people. But you just wouldn't give up, would you?" She beat her fists on my chest, tears spilling down her face. "And still you make it all about _you_! What _you've_ suffered, what _you've_ done! You don't even give a fucking _thought_ to us, do you!? You killed us and wrote us off!" Her strikes became weaker until she slumped against me, sobbing. "I hate you, Taylor. I hate you..."

Sophia spun me around, shouting in my face. "Why are you to decide who lives and who dies, you fucking hypocrite? If I don't have that right, what gives the right to you? It's okay because you have the moral high ground? You're every bit as sick as me, maybe even more, because at least I don't try to pretend I'm the exception to the rule."

Zoe grabbed at my ankle. "You have the right to get revenge? Then are others justified in avenging us? When does it end?"

I pushed Sophia away and shook off Zoe's grip. "Zoe, I never meant to hurt you or Anne. That was a failing I'll never atone for. But your daughter and husband, and Sophia here? They're unrepentant monsters. The world is a better place without them."

The black girl's fist impacted my jaw. "So what makes your morality better than mine? Why are you justified while I'm just a killer?"

Anne coughed blood in my eyes. "What makes you the good guy?" She took a step forward and the connecting ligaments creaked, several snapping and spraying the coppery liquid into the air. "You're a bad person too."

"You're willing to destroy and even end lives to protect yourself, Taylor," Alan glowered at me. "You're a worse person than I am. At least I hurt others to protect my family, not myself."

I panted and staggered backward, trying to escape from the indignation and rage. My heel caught and I stumbled, my head smacking against metal. The locker door slammed shut and I stared out at all of them. Sophia, Emma, Alan, Zoe and Anne gazed back, their neutral expressions tinged with disappointment. "Just stay in your cage, Taylor," Emma whispered through lingering tears. "You don't deserve comfort."

"Your first goal wasn't to make the world a better or safer place," Zoe said in a soft, disdainful tone. "It was revenge. Try as you might, you can't justify your actions. You killed my family not to make the world safer, but just to get the satisfaction of ending their lives."

"And here's the reward for your victory," Alan continued his wife's train of thought. "You get to spend eternity trapped in your own mind with the people you devoured. We don't even get to move on, but if we're stuck here then at least we can make sure you pay for your crimes."

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the cold steel. I did deserve this. I'd failed my family. My mother – _Wait_ , I said to myself... "Why did I see Mom?" I reopened my eyes. "If we're in my mind, how is she here? All of the rest of you, I...ate you. But I haven't come into contact with Mom's DNA since my trigger. And for that matter, where are all the Merchants?" I shook my head. "I didn't know them, but they were people too." My eyes snapped wide. "That's it. I _didn't_ know them. But I know you, and I know Emma's family even better through her memories." A part of me thought that my mother was just a hallucination like the rest of my surroundings, but I wasn't going to give in. I would never surrender to evil like Sophia, Emma and Alan.

I slammed my palm against the locker door, sending it flying, and stepped out. "Maybe that locker is all I deserve, but I'm not going to just duck my head and accept it. My father doesn't deserve everything that's been heaped on him because of your actions." I stalked toward the group, the room changing into a bizarre high-tech lab I'd never seen before. "You're not real, are you? No, you're just fragments of my subconscious looking to hurt me more. I hate myself; have for years. But I'm not going to give up while people like you can get away with destroying good people!" My arm burst in a shower of viscera, thick tendrils driving through my tormentors and consuming them.

"Maybe I am a bad person," I scowled, "but that doesn't make Emma, Sophia and Alan good people. And even if I'm a bad person, that doesn't mean I have to hurt good people. I can dedicate myself to hurting other bad people, to give the good people a chance. We sleep soundly at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf. I can be one of those rough men."

I was back in the cemetery, looking down at my mother. "I'm sorry, Mom. I know this isn't anything like what you wanted for me. But this world is a horrible place. If I have to be horrible to survive, I can at least choose who I hurt." I let myself fall into the grave and embrace her corpse.

(BREAK)

The keening alarm caused Armsmaster to jerk awake, knocking several projects off the workbench where he had passed out. The shattering was the sound of weeks worth of work needing to all be redone. More pressing – and distressing – was the tone of the alarm. While the PRT didn't work with dangerous contaminants in-house very often, preferring to send samples to safe testing zones, sometimes they didn't have that luxury. The current shrill wail of the emergency sirens was indicative of a subject escape or contaminant outbreak.

Armsmaster grabbed for his communicator, which had at one time been several smartphones and a PRT-band radio. "Situation report," he demanded across all channels. "Tell me what's happening!"

" _Containment breach in the testing labs,_ " a security officer responded. Shouts, running and the sound of verious objects breaking could be heard in the background. " _Every one of the samples went berserk! They're insanely strong for little chunks of goo; literally punching through the containment walls!_ "

The alarm changed, a synthetic female voice dominating the clangor. _Alert. Alert. Firebreak procedure has been authorized. All personnel evacuate testing areas._

Colin Wallis' eyes went wide. Not all of the subject was contained in the testing floor; the vast majority was held in stasis deeper within his lab.

Contrary to popular belief – a belief he gladly helped cultivate – Armsmaster couldn't fit every single invention into his halberd. Rather, he had several different ones for a multitude of situations, each weapon marked in code. His routine halberd was equipped with containment foam, a paralytic gas sprayer, a grappling hook with a powerful winch, a deployable (and disposable) superheated cutting blade, and countless other improvements that would serve in virtually any standard crime or rescue situation. His priority halberd, as he referred to it, was for heavy combat. Hookwolf, Fenja and Menja, Lung; anything that dangerous required significantly greater ordinance including a plasma battery with enough charge for several close-range shots or to run the plasma cutter for upwards of three minutes.

Brockton Bay seemed to be a magnet to parahumans, and with Blasto and Nilbog disconcertingly close to New Hampshire, Armsmaster also had a biohazard halberd. Superheated flamethrowers, pressurized biocide aerosol and other obscenely lethal weapons had been authorized for use in the event of an attack by the likes of Blasto or – heaven help them – Bonesaw.

It was this halberd that Colin armed before opening the reinforced doors and moving deeper into his laboratory. The container was mostly intact, a hole barely the size of a coffee stirrer the only evidence that it had been breached, and the sample was nowhere to be found. He would have expected it to begin moving toward signs of life to fulfill its purpose. Unless...unless it was sentient enough to make situational decisions. _God, what if it's **sapient?**_ The thought sent unpleasant chills through his body, like being cut with cold glass. Had this been the plan all along? Had the sample been biding its time, learning their patterns?

Armsmaster backpedaled out of the room and shut the door once again. Finally removing a hand from his weapon, he tapped his communicator. "Dragon."

After a moment, the world's greatest Tinker was on the line, her peppy voice at odds with the tension Armsmaster was experiencing. " _Hey Colin. What's going on?_ "

"I need help." Usually Armsmaster's voice was almost unnaturally even, but now it was a full robotic monotone. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, his panic was plain to the woman.

Dragon sobered in an instant. " _What happened? What's wrong?_ "

"The sample escaped. Firebreak is in effect but I kept the largest piece in my lab for study. It's...it's gone. I need you here, need one of your hunter suits to scan for this thing. If it's gotten loose, if it kills more people..." he finished his thought in a whisper. "It'll be all my fault."

" _The soonest I can get to you is probably an hour. I'll try to get there faster but I can't make promises. In the meantime, initiate quarantine protocols and travel in groups. No fewer than three at a time; nobody gets left alone._ " Dragon took a breath. " _If it's still powerful enough to do what it did to those Merchant corpses..._ " She trailed off. Neither of them needed her to finish that particular sentence.

Below them, the testing floor was drowned in a toxic cocktail and then scoured with fire.

(BREAK)

The Rig was more than a pragmatic setup. An oil rig was isolated and would make a siege difficult, yes, but it was also a statement to the gangs who tended to congregate near the coast line: "We see you. We can reach you, but you can't reach us. You can't hide."

Crime remained high in Brockton Bay, and indeed seemed only to rise despite the Protectorate's presence. The Rig was now seen by many as a statement to the public: "We're more important than you. We keep ourselves safe while you're left to the wolves."

So it was for Lew Connar, a former police officer. Because the PRT hadn't done their fucking job and cleaned up parahuman crime, what had been intended as a routine drug bust had instead become a massacre. While the ordinary men and women of the Empire traded shots with the police from cover, Rune had circled around and turned the rearmost police cruiser into a ballistic missile. Of the twelve officers assigned to the bust, only three had come home alive. Of those three, one was still fit for civil service.

Lew's right arm – his dextrous arm – had to be amputated and he'd suffered brain damage as a result of the impact. Panacea had fixed up his arm but, for whatever reason, his brain didn't have the capacity to connect with it anymore. The limb now hung at his side like a salami, useless.

So now he drank. He came here to the docks most days, hoping to run into some gangbanger little shits and maybe do one last good deed with his life. Sufficiently soused to numb the pain he'd receive, perhaps he could take some of them down and make a citizen's arrest. If nothing else, he'd at least die doing what he loved, what he believed was his life's calling: fighting to stop evil.

Lewis Connar would die today, but his crusade would continue on. As Lew took another swig of cheap whiskey, he staggered and stepped on a glob of something red and squishy.


	8. Contagion 07

**Contagion 1.07**

Dragon sighed, her hunter suit's shoulders expressing her frustration. "Well, after three scans, I can't find anything non-human present on this floor." She looked back to Colin. "I can check the other levels as well, but I'd recommend we start checking the coastline. If this thing moved away from organics to begin with, it probably tried to escape."

Director Emily Piggot had her teeth clenched so tightly her gums were beginning to bleed from the sheer pressure of her bite. No-one working at the Rig had ever seen the stern, portly woman this degree of..."apoplectic" didn't seem a strong enough word. "Wallis," she finally growled, her gaze so harsh that even the socially awkward Tinker immediately understood the emotion and flinched, "effective immediately, you are removed from your position as Protectorate commander. You have released a potential carnivorous pandemic upon our city through your neglect of basic safety protocol." Armsmaster attempted to stammer an excuse – or a rebuttal – but she bulldozed over him. "I know, you 'just wanted to understand it'. And then capes wonder why they need normal human oversight. Your obsession led to this crisis, so any lives lost? Their blood is on _your_ hands." She turned to walk out, pointing a rigid finger at her deputy director. "Renick, let Miss Militia know she is now Protectorate commander, and her first order of business is to unfuck this situation."

Armsmaster did not protest further. Instead, he strode over to his threadbare couch and let himself fall onto it. The added weight of his armor increased the impact and some of the frame gave way, causing him to sink into the cushion. He pushed up his visor and pressed his palms over his eyes, the cool metal helping the headache that had built. Dragon's suit had gone on its way to scan more of the Rig, but the Tinker's earpiece crackled to life with his friend's voice.

" _Colin, I'm sure you want to wallow right now, but we have to talk about what happened._ "

He groaned. "What's there to talk about? I screwed up. I wanted to do something good, to be remembered as more than just another cog in the system."

Dragon huffed and in his mind's eye Colin could see her little elfin face scrunching up in consternation. " _That's the problem, Colin. You WILL be remembered as more than that, by the people who really matter. Like me. You're my best friend and you make my day brighter whenever we talk. But...if you live your life trying for adulation, you'll never find it. The truly great people do what they do not for thanks or praise, but because of a greater reason._ "

"And what greater reason is that?" he snarled, tightening his grip on the nearer couch arm. "I've been fighting against the darkness my entire adult life and we haven't made more than an easily-repaired _dent_ in the crime engine of this city! Maybe I save somebody's life today, but they'll probably die next week..."

" _Then why are you still fighting?_ " She paused to let the question sink in. " _If you truly believed it was hopeless, you wouldn't keep at it. You'd do something else to make your mark; maybe join Toybox. But you're still here, so why? Because you still have faith. You believe that even one man can make a difference._ "

At this point Armsmaster had stopped arguing, stopped even trying to interrupt. He'd never heard this degree of conviction from his longtime friend.

" _But if you keep trying to build a legacy, you'll always fail. You're better than that, Colin. You're smarter than that. Instead of trying to build the next big Tinker device or beat people into the ground with your halberd, why aren't you using your brain? Not your Tinker power, but your actual brain. You're an intelligent man. You can figure things out if you spend more time on old-fashioned detective work rather than working yourself to death to forcibly make your mark on the world. The truly great don't need to make their mark on the world, Colin: the world marks itself in their presence._ "

"So you're saying I should just throw it all away? Reinvent myself?"

" _Not to throw it all away, but yes, you should reinvent yourself. Focus on how you can help, what you can do to make the world better, rather than what you want to be or how to make people pay attention to you. And if, at the end of it all, people still don't notice you? You won't care, because you know you've made a difference._ "

Colin Wallis fell silent, focusing his thoughts inward, while the world moved around him.

(BREAK)

Lew Connar tipped the bottle all the way back but couldn't shake out any further drops. Disgusted, he pitched it into the water below. Something moved in the corner of his eye and he blinked away the mild doublevision as best he could. Keeping low, he moved around a rotted-out warehouse to find a small group of young white men and women, several of whom were dragging a rolled rug into the middle of their circle. The former officer swallowed hard; he'd worked enough cases to know what was typically concealed within a rug of that size.

Sure enough, they unrolled it to reveal a battered man of ambiguous Asian descent, dressed in a red tank top and olive-drab cargo pants. The olive wasn't quite the green of the ABB, but it was close enough. He actually had the gang symbol – the three letters in stylized Asiatic calligraphy – tattooed on his neck. His hands and feet were restrained with duct tape, and his mouth was likewise covered.

Though their conversation was hushed, Lewis could make out the eagerness and concealed laughter as they passed a phone around, taking selfies over their captive. _Initiation_ , he thought. These kids wanted to join the Empire by proving they'd killed a member of the Azn Bad Boys.

Cupping a hand over his mouth, Lew dialed 911 on his old flip phone. "Empire Eighty-Eight are going to kill a man at the docks. I'm leaving the phone on; trace it." He turned down the volume before switching to speaker mode, setting it down and moving closer. Lew grabbed a rock on his way, springing into view and slamming his makeshift weapon into his first target's head. "You're all under arrest," he growled out as his victim curled up on the concrete floor and cradled her bleeding head.

A torrent of curses slurred over one another as Lewis was bum-rushed. He hadn't thought this through at all, but at least he might have the chance to indirectly get some of these fucks behind bars. They outnumbered him, bearing him to the ground, and one of them scrambled to his feet to draw a pistol. The .32, if Lew's memory served, pointed between his eyes.

The last thing he felt was searing pain, but it was only momentary. He was lucky that he didn't feel what came after.

The corpse's leg exploded in a shower of viscera, deep red tendrils drilling into the body and grabbing two of the Empire aspirants nearest the shattered limb. They screamed as their bodies were torn asunder and inverted before being dragged into the undulating mass that had been the drunkard's body.

"Shit, cape!" someone screamed. While the group scattered, one of them had the presence of mind to call in to the E88 lieutenant they'd been hoping to impress. Although they hadn't succeeded in their plan, they were alerting the Empire of an ABB sympathizer.

(BREAK)

I gasped for air, having died dozens of times. I felt the burn of the poisons, the deathly sear of the fire, the gunshot and the agony of being ripped apart. My limbs didn't want to work and I flopped on the floor like a dying fish. The Asian man on the floor was doing his utmost to scream in horror and tried rowing his body away from me.

The wail of sirens caught my attention, bringing with them a mixture of panic and relief. Sirens meant shit had gone wrong, but I'd called for them, hadn't I? No, I... _I_ hadn't. I was not Debs, I was not Gar, I was not Lew. My name came to me on the tongues of countless memories. Emma, with cruelty. Sophia, with disdain. My mother, loving. My father, broken.

 _Taylor_.

Four sets of shoes entered the derelict warehouse. "Sir, are you the one who called us?" Two covered the room while a third kept his gun trained on me. The fourth rolled me onto my back. "Holy fuck! Lew? Jesus, are you alright?"

I coughed and shook myself off. "I'm, ugh, not sure. I got one of the fucks with a rock but the rest jumped me and...I can't remember." I was getting better at lying. I accepted the cop – Tony's – arm with my right hand.

Tony blinked for a moment. "Jesus, Lew! Is it a miracle or something? Your arm's working!"

I looked as genuinely confused as I was, gazing down at the offending limb. "I guess another beating fixed it? Shit, I don't know."

"I heard that you black out when you get powers," Paulie remarked. "Think you're a cape?"

"I fuckin' hope not," I sneered. "We've got enough costumed assholes shitting up the world."

Paulie laughed. Then half his head was gone. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. I'd known these men – Lewis Connar had known these men for most of his life. They were the closest thing he had to a family. And now one of his brothers was dead. The enormous whiplike blade swung through again, cleaving Tony and Helen. And me.

Hookwolf strode in, looking more like a bone devil from mom's old D&D books than his lupine form. He casually staked the Asian in the middle of the room. "Alright," he snarled in a gravelly voice, "which one of you gets back up?"

My body pulled itself back together on reflex and, knowing that I'd have to fight, I shifted to my costume form. I narrowed my eyes at the villain; I'd have to fight my way out. "You're going to die," I said in a factual tone.

Hookwolf lunged, swinging his hands like claws as his limbs changed into bladed columns of metal. I dodged out of the way; it was easier now. I was drawing on dozens of people's streetfighting experience and was learning how to access instinct and muscle memory. I let extra essence pool on the floor and begin drinking up the corpses. I would definitely need more bulk for this fight. The villain swung his scorpion tail and I focused everything I had into _hardness_ and _strength_. I lashed out with my right arm and caught the point in my hand, the strike coming to a dead stop. Hookwolf's eyes widened behind his mask and I couldn't help a predatory grin. I clenched my fist and was rewarded with the metal crumpling beneath my fingers. He yanked his tail back but I refused to move. I grabbed the floor with my essence and held onto the stinger, tearing it free from the rest of him and causing Hookwolf to stagger.

I wasn't playing with him. I would not monologue, nor would I hold back. I needed to do my duty for the innocent people of the city, and so I could not afford another Squealer incident. I pushed off the ground, tearing divots in the floor, and drove my fist deep into his chest. Hookwolf draped his body around mine as his chest changed into some sort of garbage disposal, tearing at my arm and trying to pull me deeper into the grinder.

The pain was tangible as I felt myself being torn apart, but I focused. _I do not need to be a solid_. That thought became my mantra. I was not bound by human conventions and thus there was no reason for me to attempt conformity. I melted my body and slithered between the blades. I didn't want to draw on the memories of my other parts, the ones that had been burned away, but I needed the experience. I recalled how to push, and began shoving sideways against his blades and plates, trying to tear him apart from beneath his own armor.

I managed to force open a crack on his left side and flooded in, getting beneath his outermost layer of metal. I muscled my way further, buckling his plating and striking at the next layer. I wanted deeper. I could feel the meat within, and I wanted to _feed_. The chunks that I'd infested began rising away from that delectable core and I felt them falling away, Hookwolf shedding his exterior armor to save himself from me. Without his power holding the metal together, I easily burst it and reassembled my body. His plating was thinner now, less to protect him from me. I couldn't allow him to build up another buffer; he was mine.

That tail split into a trident, piercing me through the chest and impaling me against a wall. Hookwolf shed his tail and turned to escape. "No," I snarled, my voice not my own. I didn't bother liquefying: I'd absorbed enough of the other bodies that I had enough excess strength. I tore clean through the spike holding me immobile and gave chase. He was a quadruped and his legs were much longer, but I was faster and I didn't tire. I caught up to him after only two blocks, tackling him and spearing my hand into his back. I felt it; it was so close.

Hookwolf reversed his body, facing me now and tearing at my form, trying to wrench himself free. A sadistic smile split my face as I pushed deeper. He must have been feeling what it was like to be one of his victims, watching in horror as a shifting mass of death tore you apart. My fingers tore into the metal and I felt the warmth less than an inch away. My body inverted itself, transforming from a humanoid shape to a mass of tendrils. The sharp, thin protrusions drove against the plating. Hookwolf's armor held against the first few strikes, but eventually one of the tendrils punctured his defenses. In that instant, it was over.

A metallic, inhuman scream echoed across the city as Hookwolf's metal plates fell away, his body tearing itself apart from within.

(BREAK)

Miss Militia and Dauntless followed the trail of destruction. The ragged remains of four police officers and two civilians were intermixed with decaying remnants of Hookwolf's metal armor. The material was already pitting; in another hour or so it would dissolve to dust. The street was torn apart from the villain's bladed feet, which was somewhat uncommon. Bladed feet actually reduced traction and Hookwolf typically avoided such rookie mistakes. Perhaps he had been so panicked that he'd forgotten as he fled? If that scream had indeed been his, it made sense.

Two streets down, by a parking garage, a much larger quantity of Hookwolf's armor was scattered about, interspersed with blood splatter that was currently being analyzed, though it was a good bet that it was Hookwolf's. Miss Militia knelt down beside the sidewalk. "Dauntless, look at this." One of the sharper pieces of metal was lying counter to the rest of the scatter pattern. A closer look revealed that a word had been scratched into the concrete: _Adrestia_.

Dauntless, on the other hand, was in an alleyway opposite the presumed murder scene. He nudged a bundle of clothing, which turned out to be a man. Disheveled and unwashed, with sunken eyes and sallow cheeks, the man's every detail screamed 'junkie'. "Sir, did you witness the fight that occurred here?"

The man blinked owlishly, staring right through the hero. He didn't reply, just looking confused.

Dauntless tried to get the man lucid a few more times before giving up.

I laid back down and huddled beneath the coat, deciding to just wait here while I processed the memories and emotions from my most recent meal.


	9. Contagion 08

**Contagion 1.08**

 _In. Out. In. Out._ I ignored the snickering in the back of my mind, the gangers finding my choice of mental words infinitely amusing.

Brockton Bay was a corpse that hadn't yet realized it was dead. Countless buildings stood abandoned, some occupied by squatters or converted into crack houses and/or brothels, but most simply hung open like wounds that refused to heal. It was to one of these empty tenements that I had sojourned. I could feel the lingering presences, imprints of all the pain and sadness that had dripped into the concrete and steel. Perhaps it was because I retained memories that I had developed this more superstitious aspect of my personality, but I could practically sense the ghosts of those who had died here.

Still, it had meant that I would be undisturbed as I experimented with my powers. Each parahuman's memories and instincts helped me to further hone my own abilities. I was back in my true form – well, I'm not sure if I could legitimately say it was my true form. For all I knew, my true form was a blood-colored puddle like a palette-swapped black pudding from one of Mom's old D&D books. I was back to looking like Taylor, though, as I was most comfortable with making changes and experimenting in that body. Made sense, since it was mine.

At the moment I was practicing to extend blades of organic metal from my fingernails. Somehow, I could actually imitate metal, and mine was far more durable than Hookwolf's had been. I'd guess that its density and tensile strength would match or possibly exceed Tinker-made materials.

A scuttling noise, concrete chips rattling against the floor, caught my attention. On reflex I manifested the hoodie and bandana that concealed my identity, whirling to pinpoint the intruder. There was nothing there, which likely meant I was being paranoid; not like I didn't have reason to be. My hands felt different, though, and I gasped when I looked down at them.

My arms were a mass of ebon cables, shining like black metal. It looked like a winding tangle of steel cords, weaving in and around one another in an imitation of muscle fibers. I bent my elbow and saw a vicious saw blade exposed, jutting off the back of my forearm. My hands, however, were the truest surprise and they even frightened me.

The palms were almost as wide as my shoulders, each finger an enormous scythe of shimmering chrome. The inner curve was wickedly serrated, the spiked edges jutting out far enough to dig into whatever they cut and either grip deeply or tear chunks out of their target. The outer curve was only slightly less sharp than the inside; it wasn't that they were dull, rather that the blades were wider, made for impact more than cutting, though the blade was nothing to scoff at. My hands and arms felt even more unnaturally strong than normal, the metal muscles somehow focusing my strength better than the arms I typically utilized.

Deciding to experiment, I picked a random spot – a point on my back between the shoulder and spine – and focused. There was a brief stab of pain, like a hornet sting but without the burn of the venom, and a long, thin blade lanced out from the location I'd chosen. _Yeah,_ I thought, _I can work with this_.

I hadn't planned on going after any of the heavy hitters until I'd trained my skills, but with Hookwolf's brain came much of his tactical knowledge. The man was a savage, barely deigning to speak and seeing himself as a giant metal beast normally trapped in a human shell, and yet he was a savant when it came to pre-combat planning. He could invent complex strategies and pass them to lieutenants and higher-ups who would then ensure the groups cooperated. Hookwolf hadn't been very good at battlefield improvisation, excluding his own transformations to deal with threats, but pre-planning was something that I'd desperately needed. For too long I'd been running off half-cocked and I had nearly died several times because of it. If not for certain aspects of my power I would be dead many times over.

I sat down cross-legged, arms folded across my chest. It was Sophia's preferred meditation pose. _Not that meditation helped that evil bitch._ Still, it did help to focus my thoughts. I needed to come up with a reliable strategy to help me take down the gangs, preferably without causing too much of a commotion. I was strong, I was fast, I was durable, I was deadly. But none of that would help with the entire world after me. I wasn't the most powerful parahuman in existence, not by a long shot, and I needed to remember that. Drawing attention was bad.

 _Then use your other powers,_ my mind prompted. _You're a shapeshifter. You can look like **anyone**. Use that. You have clothes and colors for every gang in the Bay, and your face collection will only increase._ That was a very good point. Thank you, me. The police and Protectorate had been trying and failing to unseat the gangs; besieging them from without would never work. I could slither in and destroy them from the inside out: start off faking a nameless grunt, then eat my way up the ladder, imitating faces and personalities until I could catch the parahuman leaders.

The Merchants were still my current target. They represented everything wrong with the city and preyed on the weakest and most easily swayed. Once they were gone, the ABB were next. As evil as Empire Eighty-Eight was, they at least pretended to be civilized. Lung and Oni Lee were savage murderers and thought nothing of civilian lives being caught in the crossfire. Kaiser wanted to rule the city; Lung would be satisfied with ruling a mountain of ash. Once the ABB were gone, E88 would definitely be on their guard, but they wouldn't be able to resist trying to take the city. Even if they consolidated their parahuman power, I could pick off their human subordinates. Besides, only three of their capes were a legitimate threat to me – Fog, Night and Purity. If I could get them first, the rest of the Nazis would be relatively simple.

I changed form to Benny, a doughy drug addict, and overlaid my hoodie and jeans. He looked like any other anonymous schmo in the crowd, which was exactly what I intended to become. For the moment, I needed to disappear.

(BREAK)

On my walk I passed a Wards publicity event and felt my gorge rise. They paraded these kids in front of the brainless masses to convince them that the Protectorate was in control, that they were doing good for the people. Meanwhile, the gangs preyed on the weak and downtrodden and the wealthy either fled or ensconced themselves within their little communities. The government would prefer to be seen as powerful than to actually flex their military muscle and save their people, because that might send the wrong PR message. Actually helping people was less desirable than a flashy song-and-dance show.

And that was before taking into account that they were happy to cover up the crimes committed by their own. Shadow Stalker was a hateful, murderous psychopath and they let her run wild, too afraid of the Youth Guard and federal sanctions to actually do their job and protect the people from a parahuman that they definitely _could_ capture and control.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, hunched my shoulders and trudged on.

(BREAK)

Guard duty was intensely boring. Well, if D'ondre had a word like 'intensely' in his vocabulary, that's how he would have described his current job. Apparently he had good eyes and fast reflexes, which made him ideal for covering the various operations around town. With Skidmark gone, Squealer was doing her best to take the reins of the Merchants but she wasn't used to the role of leader.

D'ondre did his best to look inconspicuous, sitting on the curb and smoking a joint, appearing like just another burnout. Well, he _was_ just another burnout, but this one actually had a job to do. A few hobos and even members of other gangs passed him by, not demeaning themselves by paying him the slightest bit of attention.

A pudgy guy approached, hands in his pockets, and slowed his gait as he neared the door D'ondre was technically guarding. "Yo, my brother, you want some of the good shit?" The easiest way to assess potential threats was to offer them some pot. The actual Merchants would identify themselves, while others would give D'ondre a chance to react.

The newcomer rolled his eyes. "Christ, Dre, you're so fucked-up on that cheap ganja you don't even recognize me, do you? I'm here with the shipment."

D'ondre's smile widened. "Shit, we've been waiting for you, man. You're the only one coming tonight, right?"

"I think so. Why, you wanna go on break or somethin'?"

D'ondre shoved his hand down the man's throat, dragging him into the darkness. "You could say that." Tendrils flowed down the courier's esophagus, deflating his body and devouring him from the inside out.

I assumed the courier's – Ric's – form next. I'd found that it was easiest to think of myself as the people whose faces I was wearing if I wanted to imitate their mannerisms. Now that I was relatively certain we wouldn't have any interruptions, I took a moment to get into character.

Once firmly ensconced in the Ric persona, I clomped up the steps and pounded a fist on the door. After nearly a minute the eye slot unlocked and slid open. "I got the shit," I declared without preamble.

The door opened and I stepped inside. Numerous little meth labs were set up in the back, hidden behind ratty Japanese paper screens that looked to have been fished out of a dumpster. The ingredients I had in the package were some of the chemicals needed to actually cook up the drug, as well as more with which to cut it and stretch the production.

The door swung shut and locked. _Perfect_.

(BREAK)

 _BBPD_

Detective Moretz tilted his head. "So...what do we got here?"

Riggs shrugged. "Honestly? I'm not sure. Some concerned citizen calls to report 'screaming like a horror movie' and the place is abandoned and locked up tight, apparently from the inside." She pointed around at the wreckage. "We have clear evidence of meth labs, as well as bodies being thrown through them and these shitty screens, but no bodies."

Moretz tilted more; he was like a dog in that respect, tilting his head when he tried to figure something out. "With all the chemicals spilled, you'd think there would be flesh sloughed off everywhere." He ran a hand over his balding pate, smoothing back his black hair. "Is there any evidence, aside from the wreckage, that people were ever here?"

"Minor blood splatter," Riggs replied, the lanky woman rising from her crouch. "It's damn difficult to see without a blacklight, but the way it spreads makes no sense. It's as though the splatter is residue from an attempt to clean off actual arterial spray, but there's no evidence of cleaning products having been used."

Moretz heaved a sigh. "Sounds like we've got a cape killing on our hands."

"Yep. Hey, didn't Grant ask for some files related to the Merchants a little while ago?" Riggs closed her eyes to focus her memory. "Yeah, something about drug-related deaths that could've led to a new cape out for revenge."

"And you think this could be the same cape?" The hispanic detective tapped his bottom lip. "I'll admit, that sounds too related to be coincidence. But, wait, if this is linked to the other Merchant killings, it's also possible that it's involved with Hookwolf's death as well. The Adrestia murders are way above our pay grade."

Riggs adjusted her little gray military cap. "Yeah. I'll kick it up the chain."

(BREAK)

'He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'

It's a quote that most people have heard, in one form or another, but most don't truly understand; particularly the second sentence, as what does it matter if the abyss gazes into you? If someone asked me for the answer, I would point them to the events of the previous night. One gazes into the abyss to understand it, but linger too long and the abyss comes to understand you as well. You begin to merge, your differences disappearing.

While wearing Ric's body, I had devoured more than a dozen people, most of them unarmed, and even before consuming them I'd been reasonably certain that some of them were only guilty of cooking and distributing meth. I could have let them go; not a single one could have given a useful description to the PRT. But I couldn't afford the luxury of mercy.

It was interesting to me that I now thought of mercy as a luxury, as I had always seen it as a virtue, a symbol of heroism that was only rescinded for the most vile of monsters. But now that I had the responsibility of protecting others, I saw the truth in this diseased city: set a criminal free and the blood of their future victims stains your hands as much as theirs. I had wanted to help those homeless men escape the hobo fight, and instead they had tried to kill me in retaliation. They were so far gone, so happy to surrender themselves to their addiction, that murdering another human being – another addict manipulated into fighting and dying for the amusement of others – was something they were eager to do if it won them another dose of poison. I had no way to know which of last night's victims would commit horrific crimes to survive if I let them go free, and I had no inclination to find out. The counterargument was that I had no proof that any of them would kill, rape, kidnap or whatever else; that was a true and valid point, but I needed to err on the side of caution. Take one life to save many more. Further, these massacres would send a much-needed message: being in a gang no longer meant safety. For many career criminals, prison was a nice vacation from the harsh world outside, and imprisonment meant little or nothing to those who knew their organization would be waiting to welcome them back. Death, however, was something you didn't return from. With such a consequence, I foresaw gang recruitments dropping significantly.

Good people can be bent to evil if forced to associate with and perform evil in order to survive and protect their loved ones. If one cannot remove the need for protection, then another option is to make joining with evil markedly less safe than going it alone. Remove the good people from those circumstances and they are free to remain good, to help restore the honor and virtue of their home.

That was not my fate, however. I may have been one of those good people, once upon a time, but I had been crushed and broken and remade into something far darker and more dangerous. My only saving grace, at least to my eyes, was that I managed to focus all of my hatred and darkness upon the deserving rather than preying on the innocent who had never wronged me. Not for the first time, I wanted desperately to go back home and sob into my father's shirt, to resume being a helpless little girl and just cry out all of my pain.

But I didn't dare.

If I started crying, letting out all of my pain, my tears would drown the world. If I returned home, it would be only a matter of time until my rage boiled over once again. To seek comfort would be to endanger the one who offered it to me, and I could never put my father in that situation. Since Mom's death he had been virtually nonexistent as a parent, but two years of uselessness didn't outweigh thirteen of love and support. No, this was my burden to carry, my war to fight.

Besides, I finally had a plan. I didn't necessarily like the plan, but I admitted that it was the best one I'd thought up, both in terms of efficiency and chance of success. And it all hinged on actively distributing the poison that kept Brockton Bay's wounds festering. I had somewhere close to fifteen fresh sets of memories that all contained snippets about Merchant trade routes: the rounds their dealers would make before returning to the warehouses for a resupply. I just needed to catch one of them, take his or her place, and follow the circuit. Once that was done, I'd be able to get into one of their distribution warehouses, no questions asked. It was almost a certainty that a lieutenant or two would be there, people with more expansive knowledge of Merchant operations. And after wiping that stain off the map, I'd be able to plan out more elaborate tactics for disposing of the entire gang.

A shadow passed overhead, letting me stop squinting for a moment...then it became larger and darker, and I leapt aside to avoid being smashed by a car that screamed out of the air like a meteor. I checked to see if anyone was nearby before shifting into my cape disguise and leaping atop the nearest tall building I could find. It was really only a few stories tall, but this place had been a residential development back in the day so most buildings only had one or two floors.

Several blocks over, Rune, Fenja, Menja and Kaiser himself were squaring off against Dauntless, Battery and Velocity. Not only were the heroes outnumbered, they were pretty well outgunned too. Of the trio, only Dauntless was in any position to be a real threat and there was only one of him.

I knew that I would regret this decision, but it was a lose-lose situation and I believed that taking action would be the better of the two bad options. While I held no love for heroes more concerned with appearances and the status quo than actually helping people, the city would be worse off without them; at least, until it got back on its feet. Then we'd see. But for the moment they were the lesser of two evils and they could use some help.

I shifted to a larger, more muscular and male body, let my legs coil like springs, and launched myself into the air.


	10. Contagion 09

**Contagion 1.09**

Flight is a power just common enough to make other parahumans envious of those able to travel the skies of their own free will. One of the first things any Tinker will attempt to build is a jetpack or hoverboard, some means of imitating flight on their own merits.

I did not possess the power of flight. Moreover, I was drawing upon mass stored god-knows-where, making me overwhelmingly dense. The motion of my body after my leap was not flight, nor a glide, nor even a fall. It was a barely-controlled plummet. Doing my best to concentrate my excess mass into my right fist (it didn't swell or anything, but I could definitely tell there was more, well, _me_ there), I reared back that arm and waited to swing until the last possible moment.

The impact of my punch sent visible shockwaves through the air, crushing the side of Fenja's helmet – or was she Menja? – and sending the thirty-foot Nazi with the body of a top-tier lingerie model crumpling to the ground. I didn't think that a hit like that would kill her, though perhaps it had, but it would probably incapacitate her. In a living demonstration of Newton's third law, the strike sent me rebounding back into the air a bit before once again dropping like a rock.

Something that I would need to take into account for future engagements was that, without flight or another means of relocation, being airborne makes dodging very difficult. Before, when fighting opponents whose only means of ranged attack were firearms, this was of little consequence. However, now that a large piece of a building smashed me through another building, I determined that it was something worth considering.

The upside was that Rune's projectile shattered upon slamming me into – and through – the wall, so she didn't have that bit of ammunition for another shot. The downside was it still hurt like hell. _Note to self,_ I monologued while extricating myself from the rubble of an old diner, _apparently my body naturally draws on stored biomass. Focusing it for offense leaves less for defense, meaning things hurt more._ Mental note sealed with a kiss, I shoved my way through the rubble and rejoined the fight. Fenja/Menja/whoever... Blonde #1 was still down, while Blonde #2 was brandishing her spear and looking quite pissed. I suppose if somebody cold-cocked my twin sister I'd be pissed as well.

With a blur, Velocity appeared beside me. "Friend or foe?"

"That depends if you attack me," I rumbled in return, looking down at the hero. While Velocity wasn't the tallest man on the Protectorate's roster, my original body couldn't look him straight in the eyes. I couldn't remember which person this body had been, but he was somewhat of a giant. "I'm cleaning up this city, doing what you can't or won't. I'm not going to play by your rules but neither am I going to endanger innocents. Any consequences are on my head." I stalked past him, back into the fray. A wall of blades erupted from the ground, angled toward me, and I had to give Kaiser credit: he wasn't pulling his punches. The blades didn't stop and attempt to deter me; they shot straight into me. I probably could have focused density into my skin and broken the edges, but I didn't know that for certain and it would make less of an impression than what I had planned.

I continued walking, the metal driving further and further into me until it emerged through my back. Then, sharply turning to one side, I snapped off the blades stuck in me and stepped through the opening I'd created, plucking the shards from my body as I approached. I rolled the broad end of one longer blade like a joint, essentially creating a giant dart which I then hurled at Kaiser. Again, to his credit, he raised up a shield and also ducked, not trusting solely in his power. While Hookwolf's memories were probably influencing me a bit, I could see why he was able to lead the Empire: he was competent and ruthless, and willing to sacrifice pride for effectiveness.

Battery had made good use of the distraction I'd provided, charging up her power to full. Faster than I could track, she ricocheted between buildings to prevent Rune drawing a bead on her. Battery ran up one of the taller buildings by using the tiny windowsill indents as footholds before launching herself at Rune. I was just barely able to figure out what was happening now, the blur of Battery's form actually bouncing from one of the teen's projectiles to another like stepping stones, finally tackling the girl and pulling her into a sleeper hold, keeping Rune on top so the Shaker couldn't try using her debris to free herself.

I turned to Dauntless. "Get Kaiser! I've got the other valkyrie."

"Yes you do!"

I started to turn at the sound of that booming voice and acted purely on reflex. That enormous spear bore down on me and I didn't have time to dodge. Instead I struck in response, bracing the heels of my hands together in an attempt to catch the weapon. The shrill sound of metal screeching against metal rattled my brain, but I was still on one piece, the spear point clutched in my immense metal claws. "Naughty, naughty," I growled, digging my claws into the weapon and twisting my hands, shearing off the majority of the spear's blade in a jagged chunk.

Menja demonstrated that she had more than serviceable training with her weapon of choice, spinning it and settling into a martial-arts stance for bo staff combat. This would be tougher than initially expected, as she had a pretty reliable way of keeping me at bay. Unfortunately for her, I had more than a few tricks up my sleeve.

During our standoff I combined my own sharp mind with Hookwolf's tactical planning, then waved goodbye to Menja. I dropped into a semi-squat and spun in a circle, carving out the street with my claws and dropping into the sewer system. While I hadn't much cared for water since my trigger, I could tolerate it for this. I'd need to act quickly before she wised up, so I focused on the impacts of the giantess' feet before once again lunging up. My claws burst through the ground and returned to hands, grabbing her foot and pulling it through the street. Menja gave a surprisingly high-pitched squeak of surprise as her balance was ruined and she crashed to the ground.

I once again burst through the asphalt and punched her in the head, but without the leverage and element of surprise it didn't knock her unconscious and she returned the punch, sending me hurtling more than a full city block.

On what must have been a signal from Kaiser or a display of initiative on Menja's part, she decided to call the retreat. The blonde hefted her sister over her shoulder in the fireman's carry, plucked the unconscious Rune from Battery's hold, and then offered that same hand for Kaiser to leap onto, which he did by creating a metal platform beneath himself to get the proper altitude.

By the time I got back to the battleground, Menja was already several blocks away. I could probably have caught up to her, but I didn't know where she was headed or what nasty surprises might have been waiting for me. I shook my head and turned to leave when I heard the crackle of Dauntless' arc lance.

"Vigilantism isn't the right way to do things," he said in what was probably the start of a well-rehearsed speech. "It always starts out the same, wanting to make a difference and thinking that the law hamstrings groups like the Protectorate. And maybe you do make a difference, take down or even kill some of the big players. But then it always goes bad: you're the only one doing anything significant, you tell yourself, so you need to do more, to fight harder. And it only gets more brutal, with fewer restrictions and more and more acceptable targets. You end up alone, feared and hated, and the people you wanted to help? You've ultimately made their lives worse."

I let him finish his little monologue. "You people disgust me." I spat at his feet. "So worried about the rules of engagement and the image you present. Your moral high ground is atop the corpses of those you refused to save and those you abandoned, and your policies either create the very enemies you then seek to oppose – I dare not say you seek to destroy them, as you don't have the fortitude – or, worse, they give carte blanche to predators who operate within your own organization and terrorize the populace." I crouched for a leap, the tendrils in my legs coiling. "If I wanted to destroy the city, I'd at least join the ABB; they're doing a faster job of it, and without all the rationalizations and holier-than-thou bullshit." I leaned backward and shot into the sky, doing a flip in midair and trying to gauge my trajectory.

While flight was nice, a super-strength leap could usually outdo aerobatics in terms of sheer speed.

(BREAK)

I hit the ground in a roll and scrambled into a narrow alleyway. With a quick glance to make sure I wasn't observed, I shifted to the more innocuous and doughy form of Candice, a high-school junior. I dashed out of the alley, looking frightened, so anyone who might've been observing would see that I'd been frightened by the retreating cape.

After running for a block or so, relatively certain that I was no longer being followed, I slowed down to a gentle stroll and lost myself in thought. I'd even restrained myself to avoid drawing the Protectorate's ire, and yet instead of thanking me they gave me some bullshit spiel about vigilantism being bad. Nevermind that I couldn't remember a single genuine victory they'd ever scored against the gangs. The Protectorate couldn't turn the tide; they weren't even wave breakers. They were just a line of sandbags being slowly eroded, and weren't bothering to repair the damage caused by the endless waves.

Brockton Bay was dying. Every year the population decreased, and very little of that was from families moving away. In my entire young life I couldn't remember a single time when there had been a legal inhabitant of the gigantic tenement block off Parkson, and the suburbs near the trainyards were a ghost town. Just trying to maintain the status quo didn't work if the status quo was rot and slow death. The heroes were so afraid of making waves, of agitating the gangs that they didn't make more than token efforts at crime prevention; what kind of world did we live in where the heroes – the professionals backed by government resources – were afraid of the gangs, so much so that they were cowed into inaction?

To continue with the death metaphor, I could consider the city's condition as terminal cancer. The gangs were certainly malignant enough and seemed to only relocate and spread further on the rare occasions that someone managed to shake them up. The heroes' response to this was to resign themselves to the inevitable, climb into the hospital bed and 'make the best' of their slow demise, steadily becoming more and more useless. I, on the other hand, was unwilling to accept that we were all going to be killed off. I would take the action that the Protectorate was afraid to: metaphorically, I'd sign us up for the experimental treatment. Sure, there was a high chance of death, but a small chance to be completely cured. And if we were condemned to death regardless, I'd rather go out through my own actions, making at least some effort to save us all. I was only one girl, however.

...Well, maybe not _only_ one girl. I had the memories of several dozen people knocking around inside my skull. Every person I killed gave me at least a little bit of their knowledge and memories. That, more than any of my combat powers, was my greatest asset. I'd already dealt with the Merchants and thrown down with some of E88's best.

 _I'm in the mood for Asian now..._

(BREAK)

Grant removed his helmet with a disgusted sigh while Robin grabbed the whiteboard and Alice got Hannah's attention. "Well," the former cop groused, "that could've gone better."

"No kidding." Robin appeared in front of Grant and handed him the marker. "You talked with the big guy, Dauntless, so it's your show." He strode over to a chair and sat down just before Battery returned with Miss Militia in tow.

Not used to giving presentations, Grant Hendricks floundered for a moment or two. "Well, um," he quickly scribbled 'New Cape' at the top of the whiteboard, "we know the new guy is a Brute–"

"Perhaps we should recap for Hannah?" Alice offered.

Opting to bail out the already overtaxed Grant, Velocity spoke up. "We were up against Rune, Kaiser and the twins. Fight was going bad but then all of a sudden this guy drops out of the sky like a rock, cold-cocks Fenja, distracts Rune, intimidates Kaiser and breaks Menja's spear before actually pulling her through the street. He didn't seem to like heroes, but apparently he likes villains even less."

Hannah Roosevelt nodded. "Alright then. Please continue, Grant."

"R-right. Like I was saying, Brute for sure. He was able to take down Fenja with one punch, was unfazed when Rune put him through a wall, let himself get impaled by Kaiser with no effect, and then got punched across a city block by Menja – again, no apparent effect."

"That's...no mean feat," Miss Militia admitted. "I'm reluctant to label him Brute 8 from just one showing, but from all that I'd say it's at least a 7."

Dauntless wrote down the classification. "He's a decent Mover, as well. I don't think he has super-speed, but he could move faster by jumping than a lot of capes can by flying. I think...4, since he doesn't actually have flight?" Mover was a tricky classification; the PRT discouraged classifications of 5 or higher for any cape without flight or teleportation.

"It was creepy, too," Grant continued. "These...cords came out of his legs and coiled up like springs. At first I thought it was some sort of arterial spray, but you don't see a red that dark unless it's a deep gut wound."

Alice blinked. "Wait, this is news to me. What color was it?"

Dauntless craned an eyebrow. "A real dark, visceral red. Like I just said. Why?"

His eyes widened, however, when Velocity interjected once again. "He might be a Changer of some sort, then. Or a Breaker. When he caught Menja's spear, his arms turned into these huge metallic claws."

"Oh shit," Dauntless and Battery whispered in sync. Miss Militia was only a little behind them, and Velocity seconds after her.

Alice stood and plucked the marker from Grant's hand. "Form mutable to some degree, deep red material, and a grudge against both heroes and gangs..." She wiped away _New Cape_ and replaced it with something much more worrying.

 _Adrestia – First Creation_


	11. Contagion 10

**Contagion 1.10**

It's amazing where you can go with just the right outfit and attitude. Of course, wearing someone else's face helps, but if anyone had actually known this person I'd have been screwed. Still, casually sauntering up to the sex dungeon in the red-green of the ABB, I fist-bumped one of the guards and headed inside.

The entire place reeked of smoke and sweat, and everything was coated in a thick layer of shame. The girls on the platforms gyrated and ground against the poles, but their eyes were dead. They did this to survive: not to make ends meet, but literally to avoid being killed. The ABB treated human beings like livestock, and those who refused to be boxed into a mold were unceremoniously murdered and dumped on the beach.

I felt the deep bass thrum through my body, vibrating my essence – not forcefully enough to shake any parts of me loose, but I could definitely feel myself jostling. One girl in a booth steeled herself to not show her fear and revulsion as a "client" tore off her top and roughly groped her. My hackles rose and I wanted nothing more than to snap his jaw wide open, plunge a tendril of myself inside, and rip him apart from within. But that would start a fight. The girls would be caught in the crossfire. I scanned the room and formed a plan.

Passing a column, briefly removed from line of sight (and thanking god for the heavy smoke), I liquefied and slithered behind the bar. There wasn't a tap, so this would be less convenient, but the dark red mood lighting worked in my favor. Hiding on the floor, pressing myself into the seam of the wall and liquor rack, I extruded a tendril up the wall and reached the first bottle. Thinner and thinner I made my little pseudopod, until it was small enough to force its way under the sealed cap. A few drops of me leaked inside, and I repeated the process. It took a long time, but I eventually infected each one of the bottles. I honestly had no idea if this would work, but considering I'd been splattered and diced up, apparently I could survive in some pretty hostile environments.

I slithered out and took solid form again, plopping down in a booth and pretending to watch the dancers. A couple of them still had enthusiasm in their motions: I didn't know whether to chalk that up to denial, the hope of becoming a lieutenant's kept woman, or if this was a fetish for one or two of them, but I did know that they were the vast minority. Out of roughly twelve girls, at least eight that I'd tracked with my eyes were just going through the motions like robots – pivot, pelvic thrust, stick out butt... The ABB didn't really care, of course. This was just eye candy for them. Considering how out-of-the-way this place was and how it had no advertisement or any real way of identifying it, I figured this wasn't a strip club or brothel for profit. The ABB were well-known for human trafficking, stuffing into trucks those who refused to join or were of no use to them and shipping them out to be sold as slaves or toys to sick people across the country. Most likely, dancing here and entertaining the grunts was the only way these girls avoided the even worse fate of outright slavery. Then again, from my perspective, there wasn't much difference between the two. I scanned the room through the smoke, watching as more and more bottles were passed around.

"First time here, isn't it?"

I glanced over to see an older ABB member – mid thirties, maybe? – with a glass eye, a green bandana fastened around his arm. "I can usually tell," he smirked, "you've got that 'awkward virgin' air. If you want a girl to pop your cherry, I'd recommend Nicole there," he gestured to one of the more mechanical dancers. "She does good work, doesn't talk too much."

 _Yeah, I'm about done with this_. "They don't really look...happy," I commented. "Why do we make them do this?"

My uninvited companion shrugged. "Somebody's gotta do it. We all have a part to play, and if you step outta line somebody smacks you down. Our smackdown just happens to be more literal than most." He clapped me on the shoulder. "You get used to it."

"And if there was a way to avoid getting smacked down?"

"There's always a bigger fish," he replied. "If you're not the biggest, then you make it too much trouble for somebody to force you back in line. Like Lung: you can't take him in 'cause he'll cause too much damage to be worth it. But good luck getting that kind of rep with just a gun and an attitude. Plus, trust me," he sat down beside me, "with the Nazi trash out there, we're all safer here. Might not be fun but it's better than the alternative."

"Since you brought up Nazis, I propose a third alternative." I put my arm through his chest. In that moment I reached out with my mind to all of my essence, commanding it to eat. I felt the hunger, but it wasn't just from me as I consumed my guest: it came from all around, a multitude of out-of-body experiences all happening at once. It was...well, I'd never experienced it myself, but the memories of others I'd eaten suggested that the experience was orgasmic. All around the room, ABB members screamed and convulsed before liquefying into red puddles. I couldn't will the puddles to come to me or otherwise control them, but I shuffled over to the nearest one and was able to slurp it up like a vacuum cleaner.

Terrified out of their wits, the girls scattered while the remaining men drew their weapons and looked around for their attacker. "Shit," I yelled, moving toward the center of the room. "Did anybody see what killed everyone? Anybody fucking see it!?"

"Nuh-uh," one of them whimpered. "Shit, man, I joined up to _keep_ from getting killed by some fuckin' nutcase cape." We all gathered in the middle, watching the dark corners of the room, weapons drawn. The whiny one shouted out into the room, "H-hey! You don't have to fight the rest of us! Just...just leave, huh, and we won't chase you! Live and let live, uh? What do you say?"

I turned to the rest of the group. "I prefer Wings' saying." I held up my hands, letting them transform into those massive claws. "Live and let die," I finished the phrase while slicing through the remaining ABB. Shifting to a Merchant's appearance, I headed to the back room where most of the dancers had fled. "Hey," I shouted through the door, "they're all dead. Any of you want to get free, I suggest you get what clothes you have and figure a way to get out of town. For what it's worth, good luck."

I was slowly processing the haze of memories, getting glimpses of ABB safehouses and other locales. Glass-Eye had been right: the gangs retained their power through being too dangerous to topple. E88 had the most raw power, able to overwhelm almost any challenger, and Lung was an army unto himself. As long as both sides had this kind of power, the cowards in the Protectorate would prefer to leave the innocents to die so long as they themselves would live to see another day.

The biggest roadblock was Lung: he'd driven off Leviathan, he'd beaten the entire local Protectorate, and he was a living natural disaster when riled. He needed to die. Lung's death would create a power vacuum and the Empire would jump at the chance to expand their territory and influence. The Protectorate would be forced to take meaningful action, rather than just making token efforts, and perhaps they'd call in backup and actually fix the Nazi problem themselves. I doubted it, of course, but it _could_ happen, however unlikely it was that it actually _would_ happen.

More likely the Protectorate would turtle up and declare the city lost. Maybe they'd build a wall around the place, or maybe they'd carpet-bomb it. Either way, if the damn heroes didn't do their job, I would. I'd tear the spinal column out of every damn Nazi in the city and string them up like Christmas lights.

Shifting back to my first disguise, I left through the front door and let it hang wide. People would see the gore, hear the terrified screams, and know what they ignored every day.

(BREAK)

When people are directly confronted with horror, and shown that they've been ignoring it since time immemorial, there are two types of reactions: the first is astonishment and shame, culminating in the determination to do something about the situation, somehow make things better. The second is complete denial, doubling down on falsehoods and platitudes to avoid confronting the nightmarish truth.

For me, the truth I could no longer deny was that I'd been more than bent – I'd been twisted. I hadn't quite snapped, or broken down, or anything in that particular vein, but I'd been irrevocably changed by my experiences, my torture at the hands of Emma, Madison and Sophia and the further abuse heaped on me by the school system and, tacitly at least, the PRT. I felt no remorse at ending the lives of gang members and villains, because they were either complicit or active participants in evils committed against innocent people. If I'd gained my powers some other way, and not been tormented non-stop for almost two years, I would likely have never willingly killed someone.

It was due to this epiphany that I decided to pay a visit to my father – not in my own body, of course – and see how he'd dealt with my actions.

I first swung by the docks but his office was empty, which was distinctly odd. The rest of the union boys sat around doing very little, as dockworkers were rather useless without functioning docks. What stood out as even more strange was that Lacey's food truck was nowhere to be seen. She was almost always at the Union, offering lunch and snacks at a discount for the dockworkers, yet neither she nor Kurt were present.

I found them, and my father, back at my house. Well, I presumed they were there because Kurt's truck was out front, along with a black sedan I didn't recognize. It really stood out to me that I didn't immediately think of it as 'home'. In truth, it seemed that I didn't really have a home anymore. In that moment, I felt a crushing weight on my ribs, and in my heart. I didn't have a home; I'd given up everything to go on this crusade, and I was killing people almost indiscriminately. I...needed some semblance of normalcy to keep me from going feral.

I liquefied and snuck in through a crack in the siding. We'd kept patching it, and coating it with bug spray when the bay's humidity would cause the crack to pop back open, but I was able to slither inside. Kurt and Lacey were seated on either side of my father for emotional support, while two authority-types sat across from them.

"...ymore. Once I heard what happened with Alan's family – what they think happened, at least – I realized that's where the money must have come from. I can't...I can't have blood money like that. I don't know what happened or what drove her to this, but my daughter is _not_ a cold-blooded killer. She had to have snapped, and it's my fault for not being there for her, and now she's out there alone and probably scared and she has blood on her hands but the blood is on my hands because I left her alone to wallow in my own self-pity–" By the time one of the agents cut him off, he was babbling a mile a minute, tears streaming down his face.

"Look, Mr. Hebert," the dark-skinned man on the right (was he Indian? Arab? Israeli? It was hard to tell when you were a puddle) interrupted my father's word vomit, "all of the circumstances in this case point to something other than a teen going on a rampage. We believe your daughter is a parahuman and somehow killed the Barnes family with her powers. This is..." he grasped for the right phrasing, "a very slippery middle ground. Trigger events – the circumstances that cause people to develop powers – are always exceedingly traumatic. They're commonly known as the absolute worst day of a person's life, when they hit rock bottom and somehow keep going. Due to this, and the fact that psychotic breaks or even full-blown dissociative episodes are common, there is a chance that none of this is truly her fault."

"Unfortunately," the pale agent built like a linebacker cut in, playing the bad cop, "the note she left you and the money suggests a level of planning not typically associated with the typical vengeful rampage we see from trigger-event trauma. There's a possibility that she fixated on the Barnes family as some sort of crusade, needing for some reason to kill them in order to find peace, but the fact remains that this was almost certainly premeditated. That's four counts of murder in the first degree, and the deaths of a minor and a child are definite sticking points."

"If you can somehow convince her to come in peacefully," the 'good cop' continued for his partner, "there may be an opportunity to plea-bargain for leniency, especially if her power is significant enough to do some real good in the world. She'd basically be paying off her karmic debt rather than stewing in the Birdcage. That said, the most important thing is that we get her off the streets. Nothing turns a hurt, lost parahuman into a villain faster than having to see the darkest side of life. Especially in the Bay, a girl like her will most likely get press-ganged into the Merchants or Empire 88, and from there the indoctrination is pretty swift. We need some way to contact her, get her to turn herself in."

 _Fat chance of that happening_ , I snarled in my mind. The Protectorate took care of their own while leaving innocents to die, and the PRT helped to cover up my abuse and god-only-knew what else. They were far from any sort of 'proper authority' and I wasn't going to let them pressure me into servitude any more than I would the gangs. Because truly, what were they if not a self-serving gang with government backing and good PR? Privateers were more noble and genuine.

Disgusted with the whole charade, I slithered back out, already forming a plan. The first ones to go would be the Merchants, because they filled in the cracks. If they weren't taken out, when the gang wars started they'd go to ground and just infest more people with their drugs and sex slavery. I had a better idea of how to handle them now, and I'd rely on my brain instead of just trying to hammer my way through everything.

After them, Lung would be next. If I weakened E88 first, he'd go on a rampage to claim new territory and I'd never have a shot at taking him out: I wasn't anywhere near arrogant to think that I could take down the Dragon of Kyushu when he was at full power. With Lung gone the Nazis would make their move and wage endless war to dominate the city, but they were all human. I could pick them off one at a time and tear down their organization. Then, when the city was free from the gangs' tyranny, we'd have a reckoning with the Protectorate, see if they could actually be heroes after all.


	12. Contagion 11

**Contagion 1.11**

I walked into One Police Plaza dressed as one of the low-ranked Merchants I'd devoured. I needed information, and casual banter with police while you're helping them was a good way to get it. "Uh, 'scuse me," I slurred a little at the receptionist. "I'm here to report – well, it's not exactly a crime – but I think I know where the Merchants have one of their drug stash house things." It wasn't a lie; I knew the locations of several such storehouses, but I was going to report the least-defended. The police might be ineffectual, but they were trying their hardest and I wasn't going to send them to their deaths against a veritable army of drugged-up maniacs.

After waiting for about ten minutes, I was greeted by a clean-cut hispanic detective, his hair combed straight back. He actually offered me a handshake. "I'm Detective Kyle Moretz," he smiled. "Always glad to have some help. And you are?"

"Keith Archer," I said without hesitation. "I'm...not proud of the fact that I was considering joining the Merchants; lost my job a while back and things've been tough. But, well, then I figured I might get a finder's fee for helping you guys bring this place down and I'd rather help you out than work for them."

Moretz nodded. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I hate how many times I hear a story like yours, but I keep on truckin', try to make a difference. Now, what do you know about this place?"

"That's a good attitude," I replied, genuinely meaning it. If we could get more people with similar attitudes into positions of authority, maybe we could start to make a difference. Once the gangs were gone... "Well, it's an old house, one of the turn-of-the-century thingies from back when the area near the Docks was still, uh, affluent. Near the intersection of Deacon and Sixth. I don't have the exact address but...if you have the time and a notepad, I can give you plenty of other details."

Over the next half-hour, I gave Moretz as many details about the location as I could manage: how many guards it seemed to have, a back door that was blocked off but could probably be bashed down, the worrying roof that might come down onto the second story. And in-between, while he wrote down info and called over other officers to help compile it, I gently probed him for information about Adrestia. While he didn't give out any pertinent information – as was expected – he did purposely let slip some minor tidbits to help keep me safe. Adrestia was apparently a Tinker like Blasto, making monsters that looked like people, but they could be recognized because of the red-and-black tendrils that would appear when they used their powers, and it seemed she made low-level Brutes.

Dear lord, it was hard not to laugh at their conclusions. The PRT were so far off the mark, and so woefully unprepared for the storm that was to come. After a few pleasantries and a promise to return in a week to collect my fee if my tip turned out to be successful – I begged off contact info due to being homeless – it was time to enact part two of the plan: divert the Merchants to another safehouse, and turn it into a kill box. I would cut off the head of the snake this very night, and hopefully take a good number of subordinates when I did.

(BREAK)

"Shit-fuck-cock," I slurred, stumbling urgently through the halls of the Merchants' current headquarters. I didn't even need to pretend to stagger; the place was such a shitheap that I lost my footing naturally on the various detritus and unconscious bodies. Paint and drywall peeled off in huge strips, draping to the ground in some instances and strung-out addicts shuddered in ragged heaps, trying to endure their potential overdoses. The entire place was poorly lit and what few lights that did function flickered so often that they weren't much better than darkness. Finally I tripped and slammed face-first into the reinforced steel door: if I wasn't a non-human mass of death and destruction, I probably would've cracked open my skull. As it was, I shook off the impact and turned the crank – Squealer must've repurposed this from one of the ships in the Graveyard – to enter into her workshop. The blonde was building some new monstrosity, a murder tank most likely intended to visit revenge on whoever she deemed ultimately responsible for her lover's death. I could see her legs wiggling back and forth as she was crammed in a tiny duct. It was actually impressive that she could fit her bust in there. I called her name but she gave no response, so I grabbed a wrench and started banging on a metal table.

Squealer shouted in surprise that quickly gave way to anger as a sound echoed from the duct that I'd made just minutes before, the noise of a skull impacting metal. She yanked herself free, covered in oil and minor electrical burns, and a large red mark on her forehead. Pulling up her goggles to rest on her forehead – which resulted in a grunt of pain and her throwing the eyewear at me – she stalked over with murder in her eyes. "What!?"

"S-sorry, boss," I stammered, averting my eyes to the floor. I was sure most of her subordinates did so to avoid ogling her impressive chest and while my own eyes were drawn there as well, it was more in reflexive envy. Yes, I could take on different forms, but at my core I was still a gangly teenager without any manner of bodily curves. "But this is shit you need to know, pronto."

I thereafter spun a story about hearing through the grapevine that the BBPD were moving to claim one of the Merchants' more valuable warehouses, a drop-off point for all manner of drugs as well as illegal weapons and parts for Squealer's tinkering. While there was always a guard presence, a full-on police raid (likely backed up by the PRT for involving a parahuman-led gang) would easily crush them.

As I'd predicted, in Squealer's volatile emotional state this news sent her on the warpath. She grabbed Mush and mustered all the Merchants she could, even hitting some with the very same wrench I'd been holding when they didn't move quickly enough, and loaded us all into a mangled abomination that had once been an Airstream trailer. Packed in like sardines, I had too many eyes on me to consume any of them but at the same time that meant nobody could see my feet. I extruded tendrils and placed a tiny bit of my essence on the right shoe of every person in the vehicle: thus could I keep track of them as the night wore on.

That night, the BBPD would be too busy with their raid on the other Merchant warehouse to dispatch the needed police presence to the sound of masses screaming, and the Protectorate's response time would be too slow – only Velocity could respond in time, and I doubted that he would try charging in alone.

Once we reached our destination, Squealer pushed a button that opened the rear end of the vehicle like a hatchback and literally shook us all out as if we were a stubborn ketchup bottle. I consumed one of the lackeys right there; one person missing in this crowd wouldn't be noticeable, especially with so ramshackle a group. "Fan out and take positions," she bellowed. "Find cover. I want one group circling the outside and one group the inside at all times!" Squealer then stalked off to scream at the lieutenant in charge of this storehouse.

"I could do with stretchin' my legs," I mumbled. "I'll take inside patrol for now." Two others volunteered to join me and we headed inside.

After one lap of the building, I stepped up behind the nearer of my companions and clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. Immediately my hand became a mass of tendrils that dove into his spinal column and snapped it. I stepped forward as his body tore open and took his place. "Hey, where'd Mister Stretchy-Legs go?" I asked, looking around.

"Dunno," my remaining patrol partner muttered. "Looked too peppy to be sleepin' off a trip. Think he got distracted?"

"Fuck, what about that new cape that's going after the gangs?" I stepped backward, trembling with nervous energy, until I was hiding behind the other Merchant. One quick jab into the neck and I devoured his body.

I then sought out Squealer and tapped her on the shoulder. "Boss, can I talk with you in private?" I said in a hoarse whisper. I did my best to keep my expression haunted and it seemed I did a good job: she nodded and led me to a corner. "The other guys I was patrolling with, they ain't here no more. I think that gang-killing cape got 'em."

She tensed, pure murderous fervor in her eyes. "The fucker who killed my Skids?"

I grabbed her by the face and pulled us both into the shadows. "Guilty as charged." I pulled her apart, making sure no blood or viscera were visible, and then assumed her identity. It took a lot of effort not to stagger as I leaned against the wall, deep in thought. Unfortunately, it seemed that Tinkers didn't have much muscle memory to help with better using my powers, but I did get a better understanding of the woman who had been Sherrel Bailey. Most importantly for now, I knew how to impersonate her.

I stalked across the warehouse and got Mush's attention, nodding for him to follow me. We headed upstairs to what used to be a manager's office and the moment we were safely out of sight and screaming distance I drove my claws into him, consuming the last parahuman in the Merchants' stable. Sweet merciful Jesus, and I thought the other Merchants were bad. Mush reveled in his foulness with an almost childlike level of glee. If I hadn't thought his memories might be useful for my powers, I would have seriously regretted not destroying his brain before eating him. Thankfully, the need to take a psychic shower was worth it as I got a very interesting idea for how to use all the excess biomass for offense rather than just as a reserve.

"Alright, cockwhistles," I screeched as Squealer, descending the stairs like an enraged general, "all of you gather up! I just got some important info!" When I saw some lingering, I yelled louder. "I mean all of you! I don't wanna ruin my goddamn singing voice shouting at you sleepy cunts in the back!" The last stragglers shuffled into the gradually-forming ring of addicts.

"Listen up, you strung-out cumstains," I spoke once everyone was in place, "we got a problem. You know that gang-killing cape who's been running around – Adresser or whatever their name is – well he or she or it is probably here right now. A couple of our guys got got and a massacre is the last thing we need." I slammed one foot onto the concrete floor. "Now everybody form up, backs toward me and weapons out. I'm gonna kill the fucker who got my Skids, hear me!?"

And that was the moment: with adrenaline high and aggression focused on an unseen attacker, I put Mush's understanding to work. I drew biomass out of wherever it was stored, building it up into giant tumors beneath my "skin," and began to moan in pain. "Oh fuck, oh god, help me! What the shit is happening!?" Stunned expressions turned to face me, everyone too confused and horrified by what they were seeing. Unlike Mush, I had no reason to sustain these clumps of mass and instead let them swell with pressure, like overfilled boils about to burst.

And burst they did. Like the dog scene from John Carpenter's "The Thing" (which I'd personally never watched but had stuck in one of my victims' heads as the source of her worst nightmares), thick tendrils blasted out from the ruptured flesh and slapped heavily on the crowd around me, immediately deploying little root-like protrusions to tear into their skin and begin feeding. The screams of horror only grew louder when they couldn't break free, and when they started to realize that the spots where I was attached were deflating, as I was literally drinking them.

Nearly forty people writhed in a seemingly endless penultimacy of terror and agony as their bodies gave out, they fell to the floor, and watched helplessly while their lives drained away.

 _Bang-poof!_ I staggered from the impact of what I realized must have been a containment-foam grenade, the sticky substance inflating all along my right side. I saw a blur of red – red that wasn't me – and another _bang-poof_ on my left side. I let my tendrils shrivel and recede, leaving only my head exposed. Or rather, Squealer's head.

Velocity came to a stop outside the reach my tendrils had stretched and looked at me. "Squealer? What the–?" He paused to place a hand against his ear. "Console, this is Velocity. Cause of disturbance is Squealer, but something's wrong. There were these...tentacle things sticking out of her."

 _Time to play it up_ , I thought. _Please let my acting be good enough..._ "Please, help me," I sniffled. "Something's wrong with me."

Velocity held up a placating hand, speaking in a quiet, soothing tone. "Shh, it's okay. Tell me what happened. I need to know everything."

"I, I don't know much," I whimpered, hiccuping back tears every few words. "I got info that this place was gonna be hit by the cops, so we loaded up for war. But nobody showed. Then...it's fuzzy, like I'm missing a few minutes. Then one of my guys – I think? – tells me that Adjuster or whatever is here. I got everybody together to keep an eye out and then I...exploded..." I looked him in the eyes, at least where I guessed his eyes would be through his visor. "I'm gonna die, aren't I?"

"I'll be honest," he continued in that gentle register, "I don't know. But we have a lot of smart researchers and we live in Brockton Bay, the city with Panacea. We'll get you help. But in return, you need to turn yourself in."

"Fuck," I laughed through tears, "you save my life and I'll be a goddamn 50s housewife! I..." My eyes widened. This was the big finish. "I don't want to die." And with that I convulsed, my jaw going slack as tendrils burrowed up from it and draped down over my neck. My eyes rolled up and I liquefied, melting into the person-shaped hole in the containment foam.

"Jesus Christ," he screamed. "Console! Squealer's dead. She...she fuckin' liquefied! Adrestia somehow got her with a virus or something, and she turned into a weapon before melting!"

I didn't need to hear any more. Honing my essence into a blade, I carved through the foam and slithered away into the shadows.

(BREAK)

The next day, two headlines dominated the local news: one of the biggest drug busts in recent history on the part of the BBPD with PRT backup, and the death of Squealer and most of the Merchants. Adrestia was now officially the bogeyman of the city, an unknown horror that didn't discriminate between powered or unpowered criminals.

Anchors had criminal psychologists on as guests, who all speculated as to my motivations. Their greatest fear was that Adrestia was driven by psychosis and would eventually widen her net to include lesser criminals once the major threats were done for. I didn't think I would do that, but it was good to keep it as a warning in the back of my head.

Keith Archer never did return for his finder's fee, which only sent more rumors flying.

And as for me, I set up shop at Lung's headquarters, learning his schedule. My cape name entering the news like that had given me an idea, one I decided to run with. The evils of this world needed to know, unequivocally, that they were no longer top dog in this city. They needed to understand fear once again.

I would show hell to them.

 **A/N:** From now on, I'm going to be releasing chapters of my stories on one week early than to the general public! I'll also be working on rewards for my patrons as well as rolling out some new surprises, so stay tuned!


	13. Contagion 12

**A/N:** So here it is, the first of my chapters to be patron-previewed! One week ago today, it was posted for advanced viewing, and now it's available to all and sundry! Enjoy!

 **Contagion 1.12**

While it was difficult to infiltrate the current ABB headquarters – an old telemarketing complex whose windows had been boarded up and then reinforced with metal from the inside – once I'd passed scrutiny with the guards it was ridiculously easy to remain hidden. Lung didn't tolerate his followers to speak in his presence, even to offer counsel. When the dragon was present, you shut up and listened. Considering that I spent most of my time wearing one face or another and following him around, I didn't have to talk much, which worked for me because the less I had to talk the less risk I had of misspeaking.

My first point of order was getting the lay of the land. The cubicles had been torn down and repurposed into various kinds of furniture: desks linked together with prefab walls laid on top to form makeshift tables, sheets draped over other cubicle walls to make sleeping pallets. Lung, of course, took the administrator's office and had set it up in a mishmash of Oriental décor. At this point I wondered if he even understood that there were different cultures and nations in Southeast Asia, or that most of those cultures kind of despised one another. His collection of knickknacks reminded me of what an ignorant teen suddenly obsessed with all things Asian would amass. The memories swirling in my head told me that many of the ABB's more educated members held similar opinions, seeing Lung as a brainless bully.

By every measure, the ABB were the Bay's smallest gang (or had been until I'd gutted the Merchants. Sure, there were still hundreds of junkies wearing blue, but they'd dissolve in no time) and were really only such a big threat due to their maniacal parahuman leadership. Lung was, of course, the single strongest cape in Brockton Bay and one of the heaviest hitters in the entire country. He didn't tolerate any disobedience or even hesitation, and his definitions of both were extremely open. If you made him mad, he'd most likely kill you on the spot. Only for the truly valuable did he reserve second chances. This tendency to massacre the help, of course, meant that they didn't have too much human firepower to throw at the enemy. But with Oni Lee on their side, they could afford to attack recklessly.

In all honesty, while Lung was my target, Oni Lee was my prize. His ability to copy himself held a lot of potential for learning to better use my powers. If I could figure out how to function in two places at once – or more than two places – it would be an overwhelming advantage. Of course, thinking of Lee got my blood boiling. Lee was a murderer with more civilian blood on his hands than any other cape in Brockton Bay. These animals were everything the Protectorate were supposed to prevent, but the heroes wouldn't even challenge the ABB anymore after Lung's arrival party. What really pissed me off was that Legend was right in New York, and I'm sure Eidolon could come up with a cross-country teleportation power. Either one of them could pop in, slice Lung's limbs off, and package him up for the Birdcage. They could kill or blind Lee as a bonus, and we wouldn't have so many civilian massacres on our hands. But no, the Triumvirate were too busy looking pretty to do their jobs. The Slaughterhouse 9 at least had the excuse of the Siberian for why the heroes wouldn't touch them. After all, why would heroes risk their lives to do what's right? But there was no excuse for one of them not coming to bring down Lung and helping to restore order. Hell, Eidolon or Legend could take out the entirety of E88 as well, and it'd only take them an afternoon.

I clenched my fist, the blades digging deep into my flesh, and held the fist in the shadow of my body until my claws receded. Getting too upset tended to bring out my more predatory abilities.

The second thing I'd learned was that the ABB now had a third cape in their stable: Bakuda, a Tinker who built bombs. Apparently she'd been the one to hold Cornell University hostage a month or so ago. According to the gang's rumor mill, she could even build time-stopping bombs. Her workshop's location was a secret, known only to Lung. Well, that wasn't a problem for me.

The third bit of intelligence I'd picked up was that Lung indeed did not sleep. He spent his downtime either pacing back and forth like a caged animal or 'meditating' in an overstuffed recliner. It was in this state that I found him when I snuck into his room: eyes closed, stereotypical Asian meditation music playing, incense burning. From the memories I'd accumulated, Lung's senses grew sharper as he got bigger, but nobody knew how far above the baseline – if at all – they were when he wasn't ramped-up. Still, I did my best to tiptoe over to him.

"Why do you disturb me?" he rumbled, his voice deep and heavily accented.

I chuckled, feeling a little sheepish. "What gave me away?"

Eyes still closed, he tapped his nose. "You stink of blood."

"Huh. I was under the impression only animals could smell it," I commented.

"You still have not told me why you are here." He was surprisingly casual in the situation. Then again, he'd been at the top of the food chain for so long...

"I need to know where Bakuda's hiding."

Deep bass sounds pulsed from his ribcage, and I realized it was a sort of guttural chuckle. His eyes drifted open. "You will never find out. While I respect your attempt to reach me, you die now." Lung rose from his chair, already growing. The moment he hunched forward, briefly exposing his neck, I struck. All five bladed fingers on my right hand drove into his spine while an enlarged left palm reached around to cover his mouth and nose. My tendrils reached through his spinal column and into his brain, where–

He exploded. From deep within his flesh, blood like magma erupted in a concussive geyser and blasted me back, through the wall, and I tumbled end-over-end across dozens of sleeping mats, pulping the bodies of the sleeping ABB who had lain there. "Fuck me," I muttered, shaking off the dizziness and flexing my arms. More mass pumped into them, lines of metallic tendon cording through the black and red to reinforce me. The immense scything claws grew larger and thicker, allowing them to taper down to even sharper points. I needed to end this as quickly as I could.

"Parasite," Lung spat, his mouth already splitting open like a lily flower to reveal multiple rows of teeth. He opened his maw for another threat, then seemed to think better of it; I probably wouldn't be able to understand him anyway, considering how inhuman his face was becoming.

Neither Hookwolf nor the Merchants had ever seen Lung ramp up this quickly, or in this manner. He actually wasn't growing too much; instead, his body was piling on the scales and becoming more monstrous, as though adapting for defense rather than offense. Perhaps he was instinctively responding to the threat I posed. I dug my claws into the ground and sprinted forward, blades gouging the concrete floor and slowing my advance. This was intentional – at the last moment, I pulled my claws from their trenches and gained an additional burst of speed. The change in velocity threw him off and I slipped between his arms, folding my own close to my chest before reaching up and thrusting toward the ceiling. My claws bit deep into the flesh of his triceps, shearing through his scales but slowing to a stop when they reached his humerus bones. _Fuck it, I'll improvise._ I gripped his mutilated arms and wrung my hands around the flesh, sawing through it. Then, with a violent tug, I shucked the meat from his arms. Some muscle and tendons remained, more of it the further down his arms, but all of his skin and the vast majority of his muscles were stripped from his upper limbs.

Lung released a bellowing scream that managed to boom in my ears, a testament to how deep his voice had become, as I was sure that for an ordinary person that would be a piercing shriek of agony and panic. His arms flopped uselessly at his sides but already began to regenerate. The damage was catastrophic, so I had time, and I was already devouring the flesh I'd raked from him.

I licked my lips. His meat was thick, rich, packed with far more mass than its volume would imply. I dove forward to feast but another roar send me sprawling. Like a true dragon, Lung spewed thick gouts of fire with the force of a hurricane and I was sent through the brick and pipework of the exterior wall. Pausing to yank a piece of shattered pipe from my side, I stood and faced Lung. He was flexing his fingers now, his arms almost functional again. I couldn't let this fight drag on for much longer or he'd overpower me. Already I was beginning to question my chances.

 _You don't have to stick to human anatomy, stupid,_ I reminded myself. He could turn into a dragon? I could change as well. Until now, I'd stuck to either a humanoid shape or a semisolid. Now, however, I drew on Mush's memories of assembling trash. Pain shot through me – phantom pain, I was almost certain, based on outdated human sensibilities – and my left arm engorged, became a thick three-fingered monstrosity nearly as large as the rest of my body. My right hand inverted its knuckles, transforming into a conical blade.

With a berserker scream, I met Lung head-on, leading with my left. His right fist slammed into my meaty hand and began to force it aside, which was exactly what I wanted. Tendrils from my legs dug into the asphalt to provide a grip and I suddenly stopped fighting, letting him shove my left hand aside. Without any resistance, his eyes widened in surprise and he found himself overextending. I drove my right hand straight at his navel, piercing the flesh. The moment I was through I flexed my fingers and they curled out in all directions, gripping into the meat like some sort of organic grappling hook as envisioned by _Hellraiser_. My left hand swung back around and gripped his back, thick fingers wrapping around his obliques on either side while the thumb looped over his chest like a bandolier. I pressed myself tightly against him, tendrils flowing into him and consuming.

He exploded. I held fast. He pushed against me. I squeezed hard enough to deform his pectoral muscles. He tried to incinerate me. I let him, turning my body into a shell and pushing almost all of my essence into his abdomen. Lung dropped to his knees, hugging himself and shuddering in agony. His followers – his terrified serfs – gathered around as the huge man panted. He continued to grow, as the threat was not destroyed, but it didn't matter. The bigger he became, the more food there was for me. And I was eating him faster than he could grow. At last he fell forward, chrome-scaled face cracking the asphalt, and the last of his body dissolved only to immediately re-form as his "normal" body, a towering Asian man rather than a rage-dragon. I remained face-down, unable to shift out of Lung's form even if I'd wanted to, as the memories rushed into my mind. Why were they so vivid this time? Could it be due to his strong connection to emotions?

 _Lee placed a hand on my shoulder. We'd been through so much together already; if we were to keep our country stable, we needed to bring them to heel. The gangs needed to be leashed. It was funny, in a way: the genius medical student was following the street rat's lead. But that's how it'd always been. Ever since two genetic outsiders – a half-Chinese boy familiar with poverty and a Chinese graduate student on scholarship to medical school – had met and commiserated in a bar, we'd been inseparable. It was as a fuck-you to the racists I'd dealt with all my life that I chose the name Lung, the Chinese word for 'dragon', to spit in their eyes._

(BREAK)

 _The storm only got worse. The beast – Leviathan – refused to stay down. It had taken out the Eidolon early in the fight and since then things had only gotten worse. At this point Kyushu was shaking like a boat in a hurricane and I was terrified that the entire landmass would fall. I had always stayed out of parahuman affairs; Endbringers did not matter to me. My domain was all that mattered. But now the outside world was encroaching on my domain, and I was enraged. I could no longer wait in the wings simply to spite the foreigners._

 _I lunged from our hiding place, Lee reaching for me, and already I was nearly as large as a house. Later, I'd realize that waiting before starting a fight seemed to give me a larger boost. In the moment, however, there was only fire and rage and violence..._

(BREAK)

 _Kept for who-knows how long in a damn stone coffin, only to escape through a simple slip of the mind. I'd take what I could get. Slipping into a human trafficker's shipping crate, I hitched a ride to California. It didn't take long for me to gain a reputation, and for Lee to find me. He was...worse for the wear. Almost like a living robot. His power stole a bit of his humanity each time he used it, but he remembered me. Perhaps it was a memory of our friendship, or a need to be commanded by the most powerful – or both – but he quickly slipped back into the position of my second-in-command. From California, we carved our way across the country, trying to get as far from the grasp of the Yangban as possible._

(BREAK)

The spiral of memories was broken by the roar of an engine. The way it rattled my teeth, the high-pitched whine combined with the basso rumble, there was only one person it could belong to: Armsmaster. He and Miss Militia climbed off the vehicle, Militia already hefting some sort of rocket launcher.

"Lung?" Armsmaster's voice betrayed his confusion. There was fire and destruction, yet here was Lung, normal-sized and missing his mask.

 _Might as well play along_ , I thought, already formulating a plan. "Not really," I said in perfect English with a cruel smirk. I let a bit of my tendrils lash out, my body trembling as though it were in danger of falling apart at any moment.

"Adrestia," Miss Militia hissed, her weapon changing. Some sort of flamethrower, I guessed. Good idea. Armsmaster's grip tightened on his halberd, and he looked nervous. Was he under-equipped? Squealer had theorized that even Armsmaster couldn't keep all of his weapons and gadgets in a single halberd; perhaps she was right, and he was equipped with an anti-Lung weapon, not much use against a shapeshifting, living bomb.

"Her handiwork, at least," the reply was smooth from my lips, taunting. Lung was a master of showmanship. I kept the pressure on, offering only as much as I needed to, controlling the flow of information. They needed to know, I was the only one who could answer; I had them in my power, at least in a sense.

"Your creator needs to turn herself in," Armsmaster intoned, his voice stern and commanding. Did he practice? It would probably intimidate lesser threats into compliance. "At least we have confirmation that Adrestia is female," he sniped, as though I'd let slip something extra.

 _This is my game_ , I snarled in my mind. "The goddess of inescapable justice. Key word, goddess. Either she's a woman, or a _very_ secure man." I responded to his first statement second. "And why would she surrender? To let herself be punished for doing your job better than you?"

Miss Militia briefly raised her voice, almost shouting down Armsmaster's reply. "We suspect Adrestia has only recently obtained her powers. People only gain powers after extremely traumatic events. Since she's only been hunting criminals – Merchants, exclusively, until now – we can consider mitigating circumstances for what were, if we're being honest, cold-blooded murders." Her eyes met mine. They were surprisingly soft, for someone with her body language. She'd kill me, but have the kindness to feel bad about it. "Your creator is headed down a dark path. How far does her justice reach? When the objectively evil people are all dead, what else deserves corporal punishment?"

"And your path is any better?" I stamped my foot, cracking the asphalt. The heroes tensed. "You let innocent people die to satisfy your own moral superiority. What, Legend couldn't take an afternoon off and swing by Brockton Bay to vaporize Lung's head and blind Oni Lee? Eidolon couldn't spare an hour or two to do the same? The only reason those mass murderers didn't have a kill order is because the local Protectorate couldn't afford to piss him off." My sneer deepened. "What a state of affairs, when our protectors are too terrified of the criminals to help. Yes, Adrestia is killing people. Bad people. People who kill good, innocent people. Are these murderers worth more to you than the helpless men, women and children they slaughter?

"We are doing what you will not: actually defending the innocent people of this city. Perhaps, once a few more criminals die, they'll realize that they do not have carte blanche to operate as they please. Instead of so-called law enforcement just play-fighting for show, they face an opponent unafraid to butcher them in their homes." I paused, then tilted my head skyward and called out, "Note: existing bodies are less stable than home-grown. Also, powers don't remain." I looked back at the heroes. "We don't have to be enemies. Yes, I am a murderer. So was Lung. Consider me a soldier: I kill evil people so that good people will not die. And, when my duty is done, I too die. You will not be left with some army of ruthless killers. You will only have one woman, watching from the shadows. And if you can maintain the peace, she will have no reason to strike out once again." I spread my arms. "The good people of this world just need a chance, to have the scales balanced for once."

Armsmaster looked around, presumably trying to locate whatever observation device or biomachine I had to listen in. "Miss Hebert," he called out, his voice a little shaky as though he were taking a shot in the dark. _So, they're not sure I'm Adrestia, but they suspect..._

At that moment, I let myself dissolve. With a bloodcurdling scream, my body tore apart into flailing tendrils and seemed to melt away. In truth, I flowed down through the crack I'd made earlier and clung to the pipes running beneath the street. My message had been sent; now I had to see how the heroes would respond.


	14. Contagion 13

**A/N:** As this storyline is going more and more into a sort of crime drama, it's harder to maintain a single perspective. I'm going to adopt a multiple-perspective approach from here on, with Taylor as first-person while everybody else gets stuck with third-person.

 **Contagion 1.13**

[Taylor]

I had scored a major blow against the gangs. With Lung gone, the entire balance of power in Brockton Bay would shift. The Nazis would begin to overextend themselves trying to snap up territory, and I could pick them off one by one. The only one who was a real threat was Purity, but she hadn't been active for a while.

So, like, any teenage girl, I decided to celebrate. Fugly Bob's was a local fixture, established in the early 2000s by a war veteran who'd been horribly scarred by an explosion. He wore the title "Fugly Bob" with pride, as the rest of his platoon regarded him as a hero for getting in the way of the blast. Turns out, he had always wanted to be a cook and was pretty damn talented. Over nearly a decade, he'd gone from being the only cook to having a full staff and running the most popular burger joint in the city. Today, instead of eating people, I was going to consume something with the approximate mass of a person: Fugly Bob's Challenger.

The burger was gigantic, served on flatbread instead of a bun because the multiple pounds of meat would never fit on a bun. It cost more than thirty dollars, but if you could finish it by yourself within an hour you got it for free and had a commemorative photo put up on the wall. I showed up as myself this time, though I did away with the glasses and put my hair up in a bun. I looked different enough that I wouldn't be immediately recognized, but once my photo was up everyone would know I'd been there. Yeah, I was trolling the Protectorate: I knew at least one of them would show up at Fugly Bob's sometime and realize that their number-one suspect for Adrestia had casually shown up at a burger joint.

I walked right up to the counter and grinned at the scarred face of the restaurant's owner. "I'm here to take the Challenge."

Bob rolled his eyes. "Always the skinny ones. We don't cover getting your stomach pumped." He grabbed what looked like a notepad, but I realized it was actually a roll of waivers. I quickly signed through them and passed it back, and he nodded. "Alright then." He turned back to the kitchen. "We got a Challenger, people!"

I sat down and couldn't help but bounce a little in anticipation. It had been days, maybe weeks, since I'd had a proper meal. After all, I'd spent my time eating people rather than treating myself to food. Plus, food bought with money taken from gangsters just plain tasted better – that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Tattletale]

The blonde looked around the restaurant, keeping herself amused by ferreting out secrets from the crowd. On the surface it looked like she was on a date with her boyfriend, but really it was because Bitch was too grouchy while she healed. _Then again_ , she thought, _I suppose I'd be pissed if my teammate tased me, too_. Rachel had no real strategy beyond 'attack, attack and keep attacking until the target is a smear'. Unfortunately, that was the exact wrong tactic against a rage-dragon and the surly girl had nearly died. Her dogs had been killed in the fight, but they'd barely managed to escape. Bitch was still laid-up from her burns, and they'd left Regent in charge of making sure she wouldn't get up prematurely. _Better she be mad at him than us_ , she snickered to herself.

Her eyes scanned across the various patrons, her power laying secrets bare before her. _In the closet. Cheating on her boyfriend, likely with his boss. White-collar criminal – embezzlement. Rapist._ Then her eyes settled on the tall, skinny girl at the counter and Lisa practically heard a record scratch in her head. The sensation was so shocking that she nearly sprang from her seat, startling Brian. Shaking herself off, the blonde looked again. Her power provided her with information, but not the kind she wanted: _Death_. She tried to push for more. _Death incarnate. Do not engage. Leave. NOW_.

Lisa nodded to herself, leaning across to Brian. "Call for the check," she whispered through gritted teeth. "We need to go now." She didn't take her eyes off the major threat, watching as the girl smiled to herself and bounced in anticipation of the Challenger. _Happy. Excited. Has not eaten in a long time. Has not eaten_ food _in a long time_. She forced herself to look away. She didn't need an insight power to know that she was better off not knowing any further details. As soon as the bill was paid, she took Brian's hand and led him outside. To any outside observer, it looked like young lovers excited for some privacy. Only the almost white-knuckled grip she had on his hand gave away the truth. _Sound of explosion! Brace for impact!_ The alert came a split-second before a nearby building erupted in flame, the concussive blast throwing them back through the glass windows of the burger joint. Chunks of concrete and flaming debris hurtled with the pair, butchering the crowd within Fugly Bob's.

"God damn it," Lisa grunted, clutching a bleeding gash in her head. Another explosion, as if the first hadn't been enough – this time, however, Brian threw up a wave of darkness to dampen the blast. Concrete clattered along the ground just past the threshold instead of sailing further into the restaurant. The blonde reached into the cup of her bra and pulled out her spare domino mask, a tie-off version that would wrap around her head. Spirit gum that close to body heat was a bad idea, after all. She steeled herself and moved back into the restaurant. "Hey, you! We need to get these people out of here!"

[Taylor]

I looked at the blonde woman in the mask, realizing she was talking to me. _How did she know?_ No, that was a question for later. She was right: this place was a warzone. I ducked down where hopefully no-one would see me, and shifted into a larger and more authoritative male form. "Alright people," I boomed over the carnage, "this way! We're going out through the back of the restaurant!" I felt another concussive blast and moved before I even realized it – I stood in front of the black man casting out darkness, forming my arms into two massive parasol-like shields. Rebar and other debris lodged themselves in my flesh, but I just shook that loose. "I said **MOVE**!" My voice reverberated through the restaurant and everyone finally reacted. In a sort of stunned shuffle, they began moving toward the back.

Something that I needed to understand was that, although I had most of my victims' memories, they weren't an encyclopedic archive that I could pull up at will. Other than the most important moments in their lives, the rest was a clamorous soup that only gave up information when triggered. Thus, as I tried to understand what was the cause of this bombing, Lung's memories offered an answer.

 _Lee had often told me that he worried his experiences at the hospital were the result of a persecution complex and not actual bigotry based on his heritage. After nearly getting my head caved in during a gang fight and watching his coworkers interact with him while one of the nurses stitched me up and set a cast, I told him in no uncertain terms that it wasn't in his head._

 _Rize, on the other hand, was a self-made victim. Listening to her ramble was insufferable and all I wanted to do was twist her head off. Unfortunately, she was too valuable to kill so casually. Her bigotry and intense hatred were a perfect fit for my gang and her power had the potential to deal with the Triumvirate or even exterminate the Yangban. Until her usefulness was at an end, I would endure her psychoses. Ever since learning that Asians were docked points on the SAT, Rize had decided that the American educational system was racist against her. And, when an arrogant and sloppily written paper (I had read it to get her to be quiet for several minutes) had received a very generous C, she'd snapped and held the entirety of Cornell University hostage. We smuggled her out and rechristened her as Bakuda._

 _Bakuda_. That was the source of the explosions: a literal mad bomber with even less respect for human life than Lung. Unfortunately, Lung's memories refused to surrender the location of her lab. Perhaps I could take the information from Lee or an unpowered lieutenant. I stood, shapeshifting into a nondescript member of the ABB. Immediately afterward I had to drive tendrils into the street to keep myself from being sucked away – with a noise that I could only describe as an explosion in reverse, an entire building collapsed into a singularity before popping with a distinctive fart noise. The darkness-generator slammed into my back, his power's product being sucked away into the storm, while the blonde screamed and managed to grab my arm. The compressed matter, looking like polished obsidian, dropped to the street and then through it, the mass of an entire building condensed to the size of a golf ball.

Flashes of more memories flickered in my mind's eye. Bakuda couldn't work without endlessly rambling about how the world had wronged her, but she would also crow in detail about her bombs. Black-hole bombs, time-freezing bombs inspired by Clockblocker, anti-gravity bombs to send victims out of Earth's atmosphere, even a bomb to turn the blood of anyone caught in the blast into mercury! I hated to admit it, but she had to be one of the most talented Tinkers I'd ever heard of – such devastating versatility, all in weapons the size of hand grenades.

 _Except for the big one_ , my mind interjected. _She was building it without Lung's knowledge, but threatened me into silence. Put a bomb in my brain_. I started, but then reminded myself that I consumed everything, including inorganic matter. If there had been a bomb, it no longer existed. _She bragged to me that I'd vibrate into liquid if I snitched, then told me she was building the ultimate bomb, powerful enough to obliterate all of North America. The world would pay for undervaluing her_.

Jesus fuck, this woman was utterly insane. All this over a bad grade? This bitch's life was paradise compared to mine – and, really, compared to most people's. I would've felt strongly inclined to kill her if all she did was complain, but this mass murder was far past what merited my attention. But first, I needed to know where she was. Where had the Big One been hidden? How would she store that away without Lung knowing?

 _Toybox charged inordinate fees, but it was worth it to have security. Bakuda's weapons were, for the most part, like grenades: pull the pin and throw. Made it easy to load Lee up with more powerful explosives, but it would also mean our annihilation if her lab was found. Several gates to access a pocket-dimension warehouse, DNA-locked to Bakuda, Lee, myself and my most trusted lieutenants._

Wonderful. And of course the gates weren't fixed in place: all they needed was power. But wait, I thought, what if we destroyed the gates? Would that leave Bakuda trapped in her pocket dimension? I couldn't answer that question. I wasn't a Tinker, and while Squealer had some ideas on the subject, it wasn't like I could put myself in her mindset and access her powers. Her memories were vague, especially on the topic of pocket dimensions. She'd been working on a teleporting car, but the idea of dimensional boundaries was something she cared little for. It was entirely possible that one of Bakuda's bombs could tear open the pocket dimension and let other explosions out, and she would most certainly do just that as a final "fuck you" to the world.

I grabbed the black man by the shoulder. He was using some darkness to conceal his face, but that couldn't hide that he was built like a brick house. In other circumstances, I'd be stumbling over my own tongue trying to not appear too pathetic. "It's the ABB," I growled to him. "They have a bomb Tinker. We need to inform the Protectorate – this is only going to get worse."

He looked at me, still probably in shock from the sudden cataclysm. "What? How do you know that?"

"We don't want to know," the blonde answered for me. "It's best if we know as little about our new friend as possible." She looked to me. "Any idea where this Tinker is hiding?" She was already pulling out a phone.

I shook my head. "Some sort of dimensional gate to her warehouse. I think it's a pocket dimension, but it might just be somewhere far away. I'm not sure about anything else."

She gave a decisive nod. "Go do whatever you do, then. If you have family, check on them. We'll handle things here, then we have our own people to look out for."

I took off in a run and rocketed into the sky. I'd go on a hunt, but before I did so I needed to make sure Dad was okay. I couldn't show up as myself, but I could pop in as a 'concerned citizen'.

(BREAK)

For once, I was thankful that we lived in a rather crappy section of the city. There wasn't much worth blowing up, so the house was untouched. I landed, leaving a crater in the sidewalk, and approached the front door. I was still in the form of the towering skinhead, but I overlaid a more unassuming hoodie and jeans. I knocked on the door.

My dad's voice came through it, though he didn't open up. "What do you want?" His tone was hostile; I didn't blame him.

"Sir, are you aware of the bombings being carried out? The ABB are retaliating for Lung's death, and are targeting random installations and high-population areas. My recommendation is that you stay home for the next few days."

"...That's it?" Incredulity dripped from his voice. "No offer for paid protection? You're not a hero or PRT."

"I'm here on behalf of a concerned citizen," I replied. Dammit, if he decided to try looking for me now… "She's safe," I continued. "She asked me to come warn you. Keep your head down, Danny. We'll make sure you can see your daughter again."

The door flew open. "Where is Taylor!? What have you done with her!?" His grip held the strength of desperation, tugging me down to his level. I pulled back, jerking free.

"I've said too much already. Taylor doesn't want to be found. She's safe; I'm in her employ." I walked backward down the stairs, avoiding the rotting step. Once I was on the sidewalk, I flexed my legs and launched myself into the air on springs of my essence. _That was probably a really bad idea_ , I said to myself. That was just more reason for the Protectorate to suspect me of being Adrestia. But, damn it all, I didn't want my father to go running off in an attempt to finally be a good parent again.

I landed amid the Boat Graveyard, looking around at all the ruined ships. If we didn't do something, the entire city would end up like this. Well, it was already headed that way, but this would speed things up to an intolerable degree. I needed to find some more ABB, find out where Bakuda was keeping her gateways, and then end this threat.


End file.
